My name is Jim Hawkins, and Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey asked me to write down the whole story of Treasure Island from beginning to end.
They told me to tell everything and keep nothing back except the location of the island, since a lot of the treasure is still there.
So, here I am in the year 1750, remembering a time when my father ran the Admiral Benbow Inn and an old seaman first came to our door.
He was a tall, strong, nut-brown man, pulling a sea chest behind him.
A dark pigtail fell over the soiled shoulder of his blue coat.
His ragged hands had black, broken nails, and the scar across his cheek was a dirty, ugly white.
He came in, sat down, and ordered a glass of rum.
"A comfortable inn," he said, drinking slowly, "and in a good location. Many customers, mate?"
"No, very few," my father said. "It's a pity."
"Well, then," he said, "this is the place for me.
All I'll need each day is bacon and eggs in the morning, some rum, and a room with a high window to watch for ships."
He threw down three gold pieces.
"You can call me 'Captain,'" he said, looking fierce.
"Let me know when you need more money to cover my board."
The captain was a very quiet man.
All day he would hang around the cove or the cliffs with a brass telescope, and all evening, he would sit next to the fire and drink rum.
"Let him be," my father warned me.
Every day the old man went for a walk, and when he returned to the inn, he'd always look over his shoulder and ask, "Have any seafaring men been here?"
Occasionally, seamen did arrive at the Admiral Benbow, and he'd spy on them through the curtains.
He took me aside one day and held out a silver coin.
"I'll pay you every month," he said, "if you keep your eyes open for a seafaring man with one leg."
"One leg?" I said.
"Let me know the moment he appears."
On the first of each month, I'd ask him for my wage.
He'd stare at me for a long time, but eventually he would give me my coin.
"Look out for the seafaring man with one leg," he repeated ominously.
How that one-legged man haunted my dreams!
On stormy nights, he appeared to me in a thousand different forms, with a thousand evil expressions.
Sometimes his leg was cut off at the knee, and sometimes the entire leg would be missing.
The one-legged man would chase me over hedges and into ditches.
I thought these nightmares were a high price for my monthly pay, but oddly, the captain himself didn't scare me at all.
"More rum!" he'd shout.
He'd force our trembling guests to listen to his stories and his singing, and he wouldn't allow anyone to leave. "Pay attention!"
"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest," he sang.
"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" everyone sang in answer, joining in for fear of death.
"You'd walk the plank in the Dry Tortugas," he said, pointing to one reluctant guest.
"And on the bloody Spanish Main," he said, pointing to another, "you'd be tortured and then hung."
"He's lived among the wickedest men on the sea," one guest whispered.
"He uses such shocking language," said another.
My father held his head in his hands. "The inn will be ruined.
People won't come to be bullied and sent shivering to their beds."
I disagreed and said to my father, "The captain does us good.
People are frightened, but they like the excitement.
There's even a group of young men who pretend to admire him.
They call him 'sea dog' and 'old salt' and say he's the sort of man that made England fearsome at sea."
"But the money he paid us is long gone," my father said.
"I don't know how to insist on more.
Whenever I try, he just stares at me."
Father wrung his hands and looked very ill.
So the captain stayed. He never wrote or received letters, or spoke with anyone but the guests, and then only when drunk.
And we never saw inside his great sea chest.
Late one afternoon, Dr. Livesey arrived to see my father, who had become quite sick.
This well-dressed doctor, with his white powdered wig, clear eyes, and pleasant manners,
contrasted sharply with the filthy, bleary-eyed old sailor, drunk and sitting with his arms on the table.
Suddenly the captain began to sing:
"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
Dr. Livesey was giving orders for my father's care when the captain banged his hand on the table for quiet.
Everyone stopped talking, but Dr. Livesey continued.
The captain glared, swore, and said, "Silence, there, between decks!"
"Are you addressing me, sir?" the doctor asked.
"Aye," the captain said. "Shut the devil up."
"I have only one thing to say, sir," the doctor replied.
"Keep drinking rum and you'll soon be dead, you scoundrel!"
The old fellow sprang up, opened a pocketknife, and threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.
The doctor spoke louder. "Put that knife away, or I promise, on my honor, you shall hang."
There was a battle of looks, but the captain soon closed his weapon, grumbling like a beaten dog.
"And now, sir," the doctor continued, "I'll be watching you.
I'm not only a doctor, but also an officer of the law.
If I hear any complaints about you, I'll have you hunted down. So behave."
Soon after, Dr. Livesey rode away, but the captain held his peace that evening and many evenings to come.