Treasure Island

Ben’s handmade boat, also called a coracle, proves to be “the most cross-grained, lopsided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the maneuver she was best at” (217). The tides bring Jim close to the Hispaniola. He grabs hold of its hawser, a thick cable used to moor the ship. A breeze comes and loosens that hawser enough that Jim can cut away some of its strands. As he works, he listens to two pirates aboard the ship who are fighting and arguing. They are “plainly the worse of drink, and they were still drinking” (219). On the shore he can see the pirates’ campfire and hear them singing.

He feels the hawser slacken again and cuts the last of the strands. The ship begins “to turn upon her heel, spinning slowly, end for end, across the current” (221). As Jim paddles his small boat away, he finds that his “hands came across a light cord that was trailing across the stern bulwarks” (221), and he grabs hold of it. He looks into the ship’s cabin window. He sees two of the pirates wrestling one another, “each with a hand upon the other’s throat” (222). The ship and the small boat continue to whirl around the bay together. Jim lays low to avoid being seen by the pirates on the shore. He lays like this for hours and falls asleep.

Jim wakes up the following morning “tossing at the southwest end of Treasure Island” (225). He considers paddling to shore but is prevented by crashing waves, dangerous rocks, and a colony of sea lions that scares him off. He heads instead toward the Cape of the Woods. He learns to handle the small boat with better skill:

“‘Well, now,’ thought I to myself, ‘it is plain I must lie where I am, and not disturb the balance; but it is plain, also, that I can put the paddle over the side and from time to time, in smooth places, give her a shove or two toward land’” (228).

Suffering thirst and an aching head, Jim makes his way closer to land. He comes near the shore but is carried past the point he hoped to arrive at. He spots the Hispaniola in the distance. The ship at first seems to be sailing toward him, then seems stuck in place in the water: “Again and again was this repeated. To and fro, up and down, north, south, east, and west, the Hispaniola sailed by swoops and dashes” (231). Jim realizes that the ship might be deserted. Jim paddles toward the Hispaniola. The ship seems to pull away from him, but then the breeze stops and the ship becomes still in the water. The breeze picks up again and brings the ship toward Jim. Jim says, “I sprang to my feet and leaped, stamping the coracle under water. With one hand I caught the jibboom, while my foot was lodged between the stay and the brace” (233). Jim boards the Hispaniola and loses the coracle in the water below.

Once on the deck of the Hispaniola, Jim sees two pirate watchmen, Israel Hands and the man in the red cap. Both men appear to be unconscious, lying on the deck. The ship jumps and lurches in the water. Jim sees blood on the deck and believes that both pirates have “killed each other in their drunken wrath” (236). Just as he is thinking this, Israel Hands stirs and moans. Hands asks Jim for brandy, and Jim goes to the cabin to get it. He finds the cabin in disarray, with the “floor thick with mud” and “dozens of empty bottles” (237) rolling around on the floor.

Jim retrieves a bottle of brandy and some food for himself, then returns to the deck. He gives Hands the brandy. Hands says that the man in the red cap is dead. Jim strikes down the pirates’ Jolly Roger flag and throws it overboard. Hands offers to tell Jim how to sail the ship in exchange for food and drink. Jim accepts and says that “in three minutes I had the Hispaniola sailing easily before the wind along the coast of Treasure Island, with good hopes of turning the northern point ere noon” (240). Jim wraps Hands’s thigh wound with a handkerchief. Hands recovers as he eats and drinks, and the ship makes good progress along the coast. Jim notices an “odd smile” (241) that keeps appearing on Hands’s face.

Jim lays the ship and sits and eats with Israel Hands. Hands tries to convince him to toss the body of the man in the red cap overboard, and Jim refuses. Hands asks Jim for a bottle of wine. Jim believes Hands is trying to trick him but conceals his suspicion, asking what kind of wine he would like. Jim goes to fetch the wine, makes a lot of noise, and secretly climbs a ladder to spy on Hands. Jim watches Hands move quickly across the deck and pick a bloody knife out of a pile of rope. Hands conceals the rope in his jacket and returns to the place where he was sitting. Jim reasons that Hands will not kill him before he has steered the ship safely into harbor. Jim goes to the cabin, grabs a bottle of wine, and returns to the deck. He gives Hands the wine then takes Hands’s orders to skillfully steer the boat into a narrow anchorage. Jim focuses on the maneuvers required to beach the ship until he senses a movement and turns and sees Hands coming toward him with his knife in hand. Jim lets go of the tiller, and it strikes Hands. Jim runs away and draws a pistol, but when he fires, he finds that it is jammed with seawater. Jim dodges Hands’s knife attacks. The Hispaniola strikes the shore and capsizes. Both Jim and Hands fall and roll across the deck. Jim stands and climbs the mizzen shrouds, narrowly missing being stabbed by the knife. Once safe, he primes and loads both pistols. Hands begins to climb up to Jim but pauses when Jim points both pistols at him. Hands appears confused and begins speaking to Jim, when suddenly he reaches for something behind his back. Jim narrates that “[s]omething sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast” (254). In reaction, Jim fires the pistols and drops them both. Israel Hands is hit and falls into the water.

Hands sinks dead to the bottom of the ocean. Jim feels “sick, faint, and terrified” (256) at the blood running over his chest and back and the fear of falling into the water below. Jim shivers, and the knife comes loose. He goes below to take care of the wound, which is not serious. He tosses the body of the man in the red cap overboard. The sun begins to set. Jim gets off the ship and onto the beach. He follows a river back to the stockade. Night falls, and Jim uses the moonlight to guide him. When he gets close to the stockade he walks more carefully. He sees in the woods “the embers of a bonfire smoldering” (262). He nears the stockade and observes that on “the other side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear embers and shed a steady, red reverberation” (262). Jim fears something has gone wrong and crosses the palisade. He hears snores and is comforted by the sound, the “sea cry of the watch, that beautiful ‘All’s well,’ never fell more reassuringly on my ear” (264). It is dark inside the cabin. Jim hears the “drone of the snorers, and a small occasional noise, a flickering or pecking that I could in no way account for” (264). A shrill voice starts repeating the words, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” (264). Jim realizes it is John Silver’s pet parrot. The pirates in the cabin wake. Jim hears Silver’s voice. He tries to run away but is captured and held by a pirate.