Treasure Island, Chapters Eighteen to Twenty

In which our heroes set up camp in the stockade, though one we don't really care about gets killed, they are rejoined (and the narrative is resumed by) Jim, and Long John attempts a parley.



Wow, apparently there's only a single thing they decided was worth noting in 1908, and that's "Davy Jones," which they didn't even get right. To be fair, though, the only other thing I think I'd note is that Captain Smollett whistles "Come Lasses and Lads" to himself, which, like "Lillibullero" might not be well known to Americans in this day and age, so that there link might help you out.

As for our illustration here, we've got Captain Smollett making sure the pirates have a real good target to site on by running the flag up a makeshift pole in the stockade:

4:36 - "Then, climbing on the roof, he had with his own hand bent and run up the colours."

In other news, between chapters 19 and 20 I broke my microphone. It still works, but the mic is hanging onto the base by a wire and had to be propped up to let me finish recording. Ah well.


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

Treasure Island, Chapters Fifteen to Seventeen

In which Jim encounters certified maroon Ben Gunn who weirdly sounds a bit Texan, and we switch narrators to the doctor for a bit, hearing how they left the Hispaniola with a mess of supplies to barricade themselves in an old stockade, only to be cut short by a cannon.



Here again we've got notes, and just so you can truly understand what the good doctor keeps talking about, here's what the song Lillibullero. They also don't tag "jolly-boat," which just kind of gives me the giggles. Oh, and I'm pleased to see that an illustration from Treasure Island is used right there on the Wikipedia page!

Speaking of illustration, Wyeth didn't do the flight form the Hispaniola as seen in that aforementioned illustration, but he did give us our first good look at poor old crazy Ben Gunn:

0:45 - "I saw a figure leap with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine."

And of COURSE, after last installment talking about how glad I was to have more Long John and less doctor, captain, and squire, we switch over to the doctor narrating a few chapters I'd forgotten about, all with no Long John in sight. Of COURSE. I'm still rather proud of calling them "the Three Stodges," though.


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

Treasure Island, Chapters Twelve to Fourteen

In which Jim alerts the captain et al. to Long John's treachery, the men begin to be openly disgruntled, a cunning plan is hatched, and Jim sets foot upon Treasure Island to discover that there are still honest hands. Or, y'know, were.



Not many notes from our friends in 1908, and none at all from Chapter Fourteen. I don't actually have anything to add either, this all being more or less self-explanatory, I suppose. We're getting good into the killin' now!

Speaking of killin', here is the captain, the squire, the doctor, and Jim distributing loaded pistols to the men they're sure are honest, of whom there are unfortunately only three:

14:58 - "Loaded pistols were served out to all the sure men."

And, much like poor drunk Mr. Arrow, farewell to Alan and Tom, the latter of whom at the very least managed to die onstage, unlike the other two.

Also, I'm glad that we're gonna be getting more scenes with Long John than with the Three Stodges up there, because MAN are they boring.


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

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!

Treasure Island, Chapters Six to Eight

In which, spoilers, a treasure map is found, an expedition is mounted by the loose-lipped Squire Trelawney, with the assistance of the one-legged cook, Long John Silver, who I am certain is exactly what he appears to be.



Most notes I would make are already covered by those 1908 notes (though I do like how they say, basically, "We don't really know what Long John is saying here. He may just be babbling." I will, though, note that they make reference to Long John's wife being "a woman of colour," and later referred to in the text as "his old Negress" and I believe clarified as being from the Caribbean. The good squire's further remarks let me know that the "casual racism" tag will assuredly be getting a good workout during this book.

We get another fine Wyeth illustration during these chapters, as well:

17:21 - "I said good-bye to mother and the cove."

According to N.C. Wyeth's Wikipedia entry, his works are "sometimes seen as melodramatic." I can't imagine why.


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

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!

Treasure Island, Chapters One and Two

In which there is a most obnoxious sea captain takes residence in the Admiral Benbow inn, where young Jim Hawkins observes an unpleasant reunion with an old comrade; and in which our narrator once again forgoes the use of a British accent, except when it appropriate to use the "pirate" dialect.



Whee, new book! I hope you had your fill of lady voices in Alice and Anne, because... well, I'm reasonably certain that in Mrs. Hawkin's one line in this installment, we've already heard most of what we're going to hear from who I'm pretty sure is the only female character in the whole book. This one's a bit dude-heavy.

Upon looking for illustrations for this, I stumbled across an online version of a 1909 edition of Treasure Island that conveniently contains chapter notes for much of the unfamiliar terminology (written, of course, from a 1909 perspective; thus, the reference to "bleeding the patient" being common practice "up to fifty years ago." Anyway, saves me a bunch of trouble.

A couple of things not covered there, though: the dedication to "S.L.O., An American Gentleman" refers to Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson's at-the-time eleven-year-old stepson via Stevenson's wife, Fanny Osbourne. The two were very close, and Lloyd (as he was known) later went on to collaborate with Stevenson on several works.

The note "To the Hesitating Purchaser" makes reference to (William H. G.) Kingston, (R. M.) Ballantyne, and (James Fenimore) Cooper, all earlier writers of sea stories.

As for illustrations, I was not able to find any reference to illustrations in the original printing of Treasure Island (save one, which we'll get to later), but it seems the definitive set of illustrations are those from legendary illustrator N.C. Wyeth from a 1911 edition. In fact, it's this set of illustrations that really helped him make his name, and many (including himself) consider them to be his finest work.

We start out of course with his manly pirate men cover:

Followed of course by the colorful title page, showing the specter of a hanging looming over the frightened heads of the pirates upon finding a dead man's bones:

Then of course we move on to the illustrations in the text itself, starting with Mr. Billy Bones atop the rock with his spyglass:

5:04 - "All day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope."

And last, we've got the fight between Bones and Black Dog, with the former chasing the latter out of the Admiral Benbow and into the street and dealing an unfortunate injury to the inn's sign:

19:40 - "One last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the
chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard of Admiral Benbow."

One thing I guess those notes up there don't mention though: "chine" just means "backbone."

Looking over these illustrations now, perhaps I shouldn't have made Billy Bones quite so... old-sounding. Ah well. I'm stuck with the voice now.


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