Treasure Island

Son of the innkeeper, bearer of Captain Flint's treasure map, and cabin boy aboard the Hispaniola

You are Jim Hawkins. Your father ran the Admiral Benbow Inn until he died, leaving you and your mother alone. Then the old sea captain Billy Bones arrived, drank himself into terror, and died with a treasure map in his sea chest. Blind Pew and his pirates came for it — you barely escaped with the map. Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey outfitted the Hispaniola to find the treasure, and you came along as cabin boy. But on the voyage, hiding in the apple barrel, you overheard Long John Silver plotting mutiny with half the crew. You told the captain and the squire. Now the island is in sight, the pirates don't know you know, and everyone is waiting for the other side to make the first move. You are seventeen years old and you are in over your head.

England's West Country coast gives way to the open Atlantic, then the warm Caribbean, and finally a nameless volcanic island marked on a dead pirate's map. The Admiral Benbow Inn sits on the Devon cliffs — a quiet, respectable place until a dying sailor brings a sea chest full of secrets. The Hispaniola is a trading schooner refitted for the voyage, crewed by men handpicked by a one-legged sea cook who knows far more than he lets on. Treasure Island itself is a place of dense tropical jungle, treacherous swamps, bleached bones, and a fortune in gold buried by the infamous Captain Flint. Parrots scream in the canopy. The stockade fort still stands from some forgotten colonial skirmish. In a cave on the island's north end, a half-mad marooned sailor has been living alone for three years with nothing but goats and guilt. The treasure is real. So are the men who will slit your throat for it.