Treasure Island, Chapters Three to Five

In which Billy Bones lets on that his old comrades are after his sea chest and is delivered the Black Spot by a scary blind man, the bodies begin to pile up, the inn is lost, and Jim bemoans the weakness of women, or at least his mother.



Here again we find useful the notes from 1908 (though I find it curious that they noted Blind Pew's "tap-tap-tapping" and not the curious phrase "grope down the dingle," where "dingle" apparently means "a small, wooded valley." It also doesn't count "swabs" — do I need to tag pirate slang? — which means "good-for-nothings," and since Billy is referring to doctors who perform blood-letting as such, I wonder if it's not more accurate than Stevenson maybe intended. "Apoplexy" is also a fun, old-fashioned word for a stroke.

We also see another example of the curious anonymizing that was common in many old school novels, like in the first installment where the year is listed as "17—." Here, Mr. Dance dispatches a man to "B——," wherever that may be. I'm sure there was some valid reasoning behind it at the time, but it's really annoying for reading aloud.

Oh, and we get another good illustration from Mr. Wyeth! This one shows that terrible old Blind Pew flailing around after all his mates abandoned him, before being trampled to death by a horse. Good times.

26:35 - "Tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping and calling for his comrades."

And I suppose I needn't really have worried so much about being stuck with Billy Bones's voice, as things turned out.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!