Sunday, December 1, 2013

Treasure Island, Chapters Thirty-Three and Thirty-Four

In which our heroes get away surprisingly easily, there is much hauling of gold, and the primary villain gets away with it; and in which our narrator swears that there was more of Long John in the book, but maybe he's just thinking about Tim Curry.



Only a few notes for these last two chapters, most importantly dealing with the monetary list Jim makes while sorting out the treasure. My own editions makes a note of "walking the plank," for those unaware of what that means in a pirate context, but oddly neither of the note "pig nuts," because I seriously thought Long John was being a little cruder than he actually was.

Two final N. C. Wyeth illustrations for these sections: first, we've got Jim in Ben Gunn's cave, sorting through the massive pile of coins and loading them into bags, alongside a stack of gold ingots:

11:35 -  "I was kept busy all day in the cave packing the minted money into bread-bags."

Second, we've got the neat endpapers to Wyeth's edition, showing the pirate band charging forth to find the treasure, armed with cutlasses, muskets, shovels, and pickaxes:


And that does now officially close the book on Treasure Island. The whole book is now gathered together on The Bookshelf. Stay tuned for another short story interlude before starting our next book, and thanks for listening!


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

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