Treasure Island, Chapters Nine to Eleven

In which the Hispaniola sets sail, with the squire and the captain no fans of each other, the captain is uncertain about the voyage, and in which Jim falls asleep in an apple barrel (as you do) and discovers treachery among the crew, and in which our narrator is pretty sure that at one point he slips from "pirate dialect" to "southern belle" for some reason.



Here are the notes again, though I'm not sure why they felt they needed to define "gentlemen of fortune" as their euphemism for pirates when Jim himself does that in the actual text. Many of the notes, naturally, deal with nautical terms, and among those they skipped include "capstanbars," which are the spars on the winch they used to raise and lower the anchor or to set heavy sails. You know, these things. We've also got the boatswain (sounds like "bosun"), who is the sailor in charge of the ship's hull and rigging, and the coxswain ("coxun"), who is in charge of the smaller boat on the ship and its crew. Some of the place names are perhaps more obscure now than they were in 1908, like Goa, a major Portuguese colony in India.

Also, since there's talk of pounds and farthings, here's as good a time as any to talk about British money. Before they decimalised things in 1971, you had four farthings in a penny, twelve pennies in a shilling, twenty shillings in a pound, and twenty-one shillings per guinea. Yes, a guinea and a pound are almost exactly the same but not quite. Then of course there are other coins, like crowns (worth five shillings), sovereigns (officially worth one pound, but made of gold so kinda worth more sometimes?), halfpennies, and oh just look at this. I can't imagine why they would want to change this perfectly comprehensible system to boring "100 pennies per pound."

The illustration this time around is our first glimpse of Long John Silver, entertaining young Jim in the galley with his filthy-mouthed parrot, Cap'n Flint:

13:47 - "To me he was unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley."

Also, bonus! I forgot to include this illustration last time, despite the fact that it's described in great detail in the text itself. This one is from the original edition of Treasure Island, well before Wyeth took up paintbrush, and is the map of the island itself:

See if you can follow along!

Finally, to Mister Arrow, we hardly knew ye. Seriously, you didn't even have any lines before you, like, drunkenly staggered overboard.


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