As a story of pure adventure, “Treasure Island” stands in the very first rank. The plot is admirably conceived.
The novel opens with a description of “Bones,” an old buccaneer who comes with his strong sea-chest to the “Admiral Benbow” inn, singing the refrain which reappears in many places through the story:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,Yo! ho! ho! and a bottle of rum!”
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,Yo! ho! ho! and a bottle of rum!”
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,Yo! ho! ho! and a bottle of rum!”
His main purpose is to avoid observation, but he is at last discovered by some of his former comrades whose object is to get possession of his chest and the chart that is in it. This chart describes a place of buried treasure. Bones, who has been drinking himself to death, expires just before an attack upon the house by his fellow bandits. The chart falls into the possession of the innkeeper’s son (the man who tells the story), and he brings it to Squire Trelawney, who charters a schooner to go in search of the treasure, but when the vessel draws near the island in which the treasure is buried, it is found that most of the crew hiredby the garrulous squire belong to a band of pirates under the orders of Long John Silver, the one-legged cook. The conspiracies, the counterplots, the combats and murders on ship and shore, before the treasure is secured and carried home, are related in Stevenson’s wonderful style. Even in the wildest extravagancies there is an air of probability which leads the imagination captive. The description of Long John himself, with his plausible and garrulous good-nature concealing the most diabolical character, is very lifelike. And those of us who know nothing of buccaneers and their ways are quite convinced that the men described in “Treasure Island” are just the sort of people that pirates must really be.
From “Robinson Crusoe” to “Treasure Island” there is a long step in advance.