Treasure Island (23 page)

But the adventures of “Treasure Island” are not yet quite at an end. I had written it up to the map. The map was the chief part of my plot. For instance, I had called an islet “Skeleton Island,” not knowing what I meant, seeking only for the immediate picturesque; and it was to justify this name that I broke into the gallery of Mr. Poe and stole Flint’s pointer. And in the same way, it was because I had made two harbours that the
Hispaniola
was sent on her wanderings with Israel Hands. The time came when it was decided to republish, and I sent in my manuscript and the map along with it to Messrs. Cassell. The proofs came, they were corrected, but I heard nothing of the map. I wrote and asked; was told it had never been received, and sat aghast. It is one thing to draw a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and with a pair of compasses painfully design a map to suit the data. I did it, and the map was drawn again in my father’s office, with embellishments of blowing whales and sailing ships; and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately
forged
the signature of Captain Flint and the sailing directions of Billy Bones. But somehow it was never “Treasure Island” to me.

I have said it was the most of the plot. I might almost say it was the whole. A few reminiscences of Poe, Defoe, and Washington Irving, a copy of Johnson’s “Buccaneers,” the name of the Dead Man’s Chest from Kingsley’s “At Last,”
¹⁰
some recollections of canoeing on the high seas, a cruise in a fifteen-ton schooner yacht, and the map itself with its infinite, eloquent suggestion, made up the whole of my materials. It is perhaps not often that a map figures so largely in a tale; yet it is always important. The author must know his countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun’s rising, the behaviour of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome
the moon is! I have come to grief over the moon in “Prince Otto;”
¹¹
and, so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which I recommend to other men—I never write now without an almanac.
¹²
With an almanac, and the map of the country and the plan of every house, either actually plotted on paper or clearly and immediately apprehended in the mind, a man may hope to avoid some of the grossest possible blunders. With the map before him, he will scarce allow the sun to set in the east, as it does in the “Antiquary.”
¹³
With the almanac at hand, he will scarce allow two horsemen, journeying on the most urgent affair, to employ six days, from three of the Monday morning till late in the Saturday night, upon a journey of, say, ninety or a hundred miles; and before the week is out, and still on the same nags, to cover fifty in one day, as he may read at length in the inimitable novel of “Rob Roy.”
¹⁴
And it is certainly well, though far from necessary, to avoid such
croppers
. But it is my contention—my superstition, if you like—that he who is faithful to his map, and consults it, and draws from it his inspiration, daily and hourly, gains positive support, and not mere negative immunity from accident. The tale has a root there; it grows in that soil; it has a spine of its own behind the words. Better if the country be real, and he has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone. But, even with imaginary places, he will do well in the beginning to provide a map. As he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon. He will discover obvious though unsuspected short cuts and footpaths for his messengers; and even when a map is not all the plot, as it was in “Treasure Island,” it will be found to be a mine of suggestion.

R
OBERT
L
OUIS
S
TEVENSON
.

Notes to “My First Book”

1. “
Rathillet
.” The titles which follow are those of fledgling novels by Stevenson that were never published. As his own note indicates, he did produce in his teens a pamphlet account of an incident caused by the persecution of Scots Covenantors during the Restoration in 1666, which was not to be confused with the unpublished novel that bore the same title.

2.
bogie stories
. Horror or ghost stories (cf. “bogey”), though Stevenson’s favored term at the time these stories were written
seems to have been “bogle,” or goblin. The cooperative project with Fanny, the former Mrs. Samuel Osbourne, did not come to much. “The Shadow on the Bed” was never published, although “Thrawn Janet” and “The Merry Men” are counted among Stevenson’s best short works, despite their heavy use of Scots dialect. His interest in Washington living’s “The Gold Diggers” in
Tales of a Traveller
, which contains a number of ghost stories, seems to date from this period. It is worth noting here the effect of the rugged Scottish landscape on Stevenson’s imagination, which is demonstrated at length in “The Merry Men.”

3.
Women were excluded
. Where his partner in the projected collection of ghost stories had been his wife, here Stevenson’s father, Thomas, and most especially his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, were collaborators, lending double weight to this sentence.

4.
an admired friend
. The poet-editor William Ernest Henley.

5.
parrot
…
skeleton
…
stockade
. See the introduction for a brief discussion of these specific debts. Marryat’s
Masterman Ready
is a castaway novel for young readers that attempted to “correct”
The Swiss Family Robinson
by denying the characters a ship loaded with supplies assisting in their survival. The title character is a seaman whose common sense and practical know-how are responsible for saving the castaway family.

6.
Dr. Jaap
. Alexander Jaap, who suggested to Stevenson that he publish his novel as a serial in James Henderson’s
Young Folks
, a popular children’s magazine of the day.

7. “
Hand and Spear
.” The logo and sign of Stevenson’s publishers, Cassell & Co.

8.
M. du Boisgobey
. Fortuné du Boisgobey (1824–91), a writer of detective fiction, first published serially in newspapers, hence a byword for escapist literature.

9.
John Addington Symonds
. Symonds (1840–93), a historian of the Italian Renaissance and an occasional poet, shared little in common with his friend Stevenson beyond weak tubercular lungs, as the proposed study of Theophrastus (c. 370–285
b.c.
) suggests. At this time, Stevenson was thought of as a promising essayist, a genre to which the satiric
Characters
is regarded as belonging, being studies of individual human types, which may have inspired his friend’s suggestion.

10.
Johnson’s “Buccaneers” … Kingsley’s “At Last
.” Captain
Charles Johnson’s
General History of the Pyrates
(1724) was a popular if imaginative source of piratical lore. Charles Kingsley (1819–75), a popular novelist who in 1871 wrote
At Last
, an account of a trip to the West Indies, which seems not to have had much effect on Stevenson’s knowledge of Caribbean flora and fauna.

11. “
Prince Otto
.” A romance by Stevenson (1885) not generally regarded as one of his best.

12.
almanac
. An annual publication containing a calendar of meteorological and astronomical data. Stevenson here is suggesting that a writer wishing to be accurate in matters of moonshine should make use of an almanac for the year and date in question.

13. “
Antiquary.” The Antiquary
(1816), a historical romance by Sir Walter Scott, Stevenson’s famous predecessor and therefore rival, so well known in 1894 as not to need further identification.

14. “
Rob Roy.” Rob Roy
(1817), also by Scott, as above. The proximity of the dates confirms that Scott wrote more quickly than carefully, and he regarded fiction as a lesser craft than poetry, hence the anonymous initial publication of his romances. By Stevenson’s day, standards of literary realism were having their impact even on romance fiction, as the author’s punctiliousness regarding maps and almanacs indicates, though as our introduction suggests, he was still capable of “croppers” regarding matters of West Indian vegetation and wildlife.

*
Ne pas confondre. Not the slim green pamphlet with the imprint of Andrew Elliott, for which (as I see with amazement from the book-lists) the gentlemen of England are willing to pay fancy prices; but its predecessor, a bulky historical romance without a spark of merit, and now deleted from the world.

The episode in Irving’s
Tales of a Traveller
that inspired the opening chapters of
Treasure Island
occurs in Volume II, Part IV, “The Money Diggers,” which is made up of four sections that have to do with pirate lore and buried treasure. The last of these, “Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams” (which includes a separate but related tale, “The Adventure of the Black Fisherman,” not included here), contains the material in question, the important parts of which follow. Placed back in context, the episode in which an old pirate terrorizes a rural seaside inn is surrounded by gothic tales and anecdotes, involving actual or storied ghosts, but by itself it is a relatively realistic narrative, if given a romantic coloring in keeping with the surrounding material. Only the climax, with the drowning during a violent thunderstorm of the old pirate—whose ghost will reappear in a closing episode, eliminated here for sake of brevity—shares the tendency toward the supernatural that characterizes “The Money Diggers” throughout, most especially the section entitled “The Devil and Tom Walker,” a story often anthologized by itself. This material, not relevant to
Treasure Island
, does bear comparison with Stevenson’s short story “The Merry Men,” written, as the author notes, at about the same time as his first novel.

Many months had elapsed since Wolfert had frequented his old resort, the rural inn. He was taking a long lonely walk one Saturday afternoon, musing over his wants and disappointments, when his feet took instinctively their wonted direction, and on awaking out of a reverie, he found himself before the door of the inn. For some moments he hesitated whether to enter, but his heart yearned for companionship; and where can a ruined man find better companionship than at a tavern, where there is neither sober example nor sober advice to put him out of countenance?

Wolfert found several of the old frequenters of the inn at their usual places; but one was missing, the great Ramm Rapelye, who for many years had filled the leather-bottomed chair of state. His
place was supplied by a stranger, who seemed, however, completely at home in the chair and the tavern. He was rather under size, but deep-chested, square, and muscular. His broad shoulders, double joints, and bow knees, gave tokens of prodigious strength. His face was dark and weather-beaten; a deep scar, as if from the slash of a cutlass, had almost divided his nose, and made a gash in his upper lip, through which his teeth shone like a bull-dog’s. A mop of iron-gray hair gave a grisly finish to this hard-favored visage. His dress was of an amphibious character. He wore an old hat edged with tarnished lace, and cocked in martial style, on one side of his head; a rusty blue military coat with brass buttons, and a wide pair of short petticoat trousers, or rather breeches, for they were gathered up at the knees. He ordered everybody about him with an authoritative air; talking in a brattling voice, that sounded like the crackling of thorns under a pot; d——d the landlord and servants with perfect impunity, and was waited upon with greater obsequiousness than had ever been shown to the mighty Ramm himself.

Wolfert’s curiosity was awakened to know who and what was this stranger, who had thus usurped absolute sway in this ancient domain. Peechy Prauw took him aside, into a remote corner of the hall, and there, in an under voice, and with great caution, imparted to him all that he knew on the subject. The inn had been aroused several months before, on a dark night, by repeated long shouts, that seemed like the howling of a wolf. They came from the waterside and at length were distinguished to be hailing the house in the seafaring manner, “House-a-hoy!” The landlord turned out with his head waiter, tapster, hostler, and errand-boy,—that is to say, with his old negro Cuff. On approaching the place whence the voice proceeded, they found this amphibious-looking personage at the water’s edge, quite alone, and seated on a great oaken sea-chest. How he came there, whether he had been set on shore from some boat, or had floated to land on his chest, nobody could tell, for he did not seem disposed to answer questions; and there was something in his looks and manners that put a stop to all questioning. Suffice it to say, he took possession of a corner-room of the inn, to which his chest was removed with great difficulty. Here he had remained ever since, keeping about the inn and its vicinity. Sometimes, it is true, he disappeared for one, two, or three days at a time, going and returning without giving any notice or account of his
movements. He always appeared to have plenty of money, though often of very strange, outlandish coinage; and he regularly paid his bill every evening before turning in.

He had fitted up his room to his own fancy, having slung a hammock from the ceiling instead of a bed, and decorated the walls with rusty pistols and cutlasses of foreign workmanship. A greater part of his time was passed in this room, seated by the window, which commanded a wide view of the Sound, a short old-fashioned pipe in his mouth, a glass of rum-toddy at his elbow, and a pocket-telescope in his hand, with which he reconnoitred every boat that moved upon the water. Large, square-rigged vessels seemed to excite but little attention; but the moment he descried anything with a shoulder-of-mutton sail, or that a barge, or yawl, or jolly-boat hove in sight, up went the telescope, and he examined it with the most scrupulous attention.

All this might have passed without much notice, for in those times the province was so much the resort of adventurers of all characters and climes, that any oddity in dress or behavior attracted but small attention. In a little while, however, this strange sea-monster, thus strangely cast upon dry land, began to encroach upon the long-established customs and customers of the place, and to interfere in a dictatorial manner in the affairs of the nine-pin alley and the bar-room, until in the end he usurped an absolute command over the whole inn. It was all in vain to attempt to withstand his authority. He was not exactly quarrelsome, but boisterous and peremptory, like one accustomed to tyrannize on a quarter-deck; and there was a dare-devil air about everything he said and did, that inspired wariness in all by-standers. Even the half-pay officer, so long the hero of the club, was soon silenced by him; and the quiet burghers stared with wonder at seeing their inflammable man-of-war so readily and quietly extinguished.

And then the tales that he would tell were enough to make a peaceable man’s hair stand on end. There was not a sea-fight, nor marauding nor freebooting adventure that had happened within the last twenty years, but he seemed perfectly versed in it. He delighted to talk of the exploits of the buccaneers in the West Indies, and on the Spanish Main. How his eyes would glisten, as he described the waylaying of treasure-ships, the desperate fights, yard-arm and yard-arm—broadside and broadside—the boarding and capturing
huge Spanish galleons! With what chuckling relish would he describe the descent upon some rich Spanish colony; the rifling of a church; the sacking of a convent! You would have thought you heard some gormandizer dilating upon the roasting of a savory goose at Michaelmas as he described the roasting of some Spanish Don to make him discover his treasure—a detail given with a minuteness that made every rich old burgher present turn uncomfortably in his chair. All this would be told with infinite glee, as if he considered it an excellent joke; and then he would give such a tyrannical leer in the face of his next neighbor, that the poor man would be fain to laugh out of sheer faint-heartedness. If any one, however, pretended to contradict him in any of his stories, he was on fire in an instant. His very cocked hat assumed a momentary fierceness, and seemed to resent the contradiction. “How the devil should you know as well as I?—I tell you it was as I say;” and he would at the same time let slip a broadside of thundering oaths and tremendous sea-phrases, such as had never been heard before within these peaceful walls.

Indeed, the worthy burghers began to surmise that he knew more of those stories than mere hearsay. Day after day their conjectures concerning him grew more and more wild and fearful. The strangeness of his arrival, the strangeness of his manners, the mystery that surrounded him, all made him something incomprehensible in their eyes. He was a kind of monster of the deep to them—he was a merman—he was a behemoth—he was a leviathan—in short, they knew not what he was.

The domineering spirit of this boisterous sea-urchin at length grew quite intolerable. He was no respecter of persons; he contradicted the richest burghers without hesitation; he took possession of the sacred elbow-chair, which, time out of mind, had been the seat of sovereignty of the illustrious Ramm Rapelye. Nay, he even went so far, in one of his rough jocular moods, as to slap that mighty burgher on the back, drink his toddy, and wink in his face, a thing scarcely to be believed. From this time Ramm Rapelye appeared no more at the inn; his example was followed by several of the most eminent customers, who were too rich to tolerate being bullied out of their opinions, or being obliged to laugh at another man’s jokes. The landlord was almost in despair; but he knew not how to get rid of this sea-monster and his sea-chest, who seemed
both to have grown like fixtures, or excrescences, on his establishment.

Such was the account whispered cautiously in Wolfert’s ear, by the narrator, Peechy Prauw, as he held him by the button in a corner of the hall, casting a wary glance now and then towards the door of the bar-room, lest he should be overheard by the terrible hero of his tale.

Wolfert took his seat in a remote part of the room in silence; impressed with profound awe of this unknown, so versed in freebooting history. It was to him a wonderful instance of the revolutions of mighty empires, to find the venerable Ramm Rapelye thus ousted from the throne, and a rugged tarpauling dictating from his elbow-chair, hectoring the patriarchs, and filling this tranquil little realm with brawl and bravado.

The stranger was on this evening in a more than usually communicative mood, and was narrating a number of astounding stories of plunderings and burnings on the high seas. He dwelt upon them with peculiar relish, heightening the frightful particulars in proportion to their effect on his peaceful auditors. He gave a swaggering detail of the capture of a Spanish merchantman. She was lying becalmed during a long summer’s day, just off from the island which was one of the lurking-places of the pirates. They had reconnoitered her with their spy-glasses from the shore, and ascertained her character and force. At night a picked crew of daring fellows set off for her in a whale-boat. They approached with muffled oars, as she lay rocking idly with the undulations of the sea, and her sails flapping against the masts. They were close under the stern before the guard on deck was aware of their approach. The alarm was given; the pirates threw hand-grenades on deck, and sprang up the main chains, sword in hand.

The crew flew to arms, but in great confusion; some were shot down, others took refuge in the tops; others were driven overboard and drowned, while others fought hand to hand from the main-deck to the quarter-deck, disputing gallantly every inch of ground. There were three Spanish gentlemen on board with their ladies, who made the most desperate resistance. They defended the companion-way, cut down several of their assailants, and fought like very devils, for they were maddened by the shrieks of the ladies from the cabin. One of the Dons was old, and soon dispatched. The
other two kept their ground vigorously, even though the captain of the pirates was among their assailants. Just then there was a shout of victory from the main-deck. “The ship is ours!” cried the pirates.

One of the Dons immediately dropped his sword and surrendered; the other, who was a hot-headed youngster, and just married, gave the captain a slash in the face that laid it all open. The captain just made out to articulate the words “no quarter.”

“And what did they do with their prisoners?” said Peechy Prauw, eagerly.

“Threw them all overboard,” was the answer. A dead pause followed the reply. Peechy Prauw sunk quietly back, like a man who had unwarily stolen upon the lair of a sleeping lion. The honest burghers cast fearful glances at the deep scar slashed across the visage of the stranger, and moved their chairs a little farther off. The seaman, however, smoked on without moving a muscle, as though he either did not perceive or did not regard the unfavorable effect he had produced upon his hearers.

The half-pay officer was the first to break the silence; for he was continually tempted to make ineffectual head against this tyrant of the seas, and to regain his lost consequence in the eyes of his ancient companions. He now tried to match the gunpowder tales of the stranger by others equally tremendous. Kidd, as usual, was his hero, concerning whom he seemed to have picked up many of the floating traditions of the province. The seaman had always evinced a settled pique against the one-eyed warrior. On this occasion he listened with peculiar impatience. He sat with arm akimbo, the other elbow on the table, the hand holding on to the small pipe he was pettishly puffing; his legs crossed; drumming with one foot on the ground, and casting every now and then the side-glance of a basilisk at the prosing captain. At length the latter spoke of Kidd’s having ascended the Hudson with some of his crew, to land his plunder in secrecy.

“Kidd up the Hudson!” burst forth the seaman, with a tremendous oath,—”Kidd never was up the Hudson!”

“I tell you he was,” said the other. “Aye, and they say he buried a quantity of treasure on the little flat that runs out into the river, called the Devil’s Dans Kammer.”

“The Devil’s Dans Kammer in your teeth!” cried the seaman. “I
tell you Kidd never was up the Hudson. What a plague do you know of Kidd and his haunts?”

“What do I know?” echoed the half-pay officer. “Why, I was in London at the time of his trial; aye, and I had the pleasure of seeing him hanged at Execution Dock.”

“Then, sir, let me tell you that you saw as pretty a fellow hanged as ever trod shoe-leather. Aye!” putting his face nearer to that of the officer, “and there was many a land-lubber looked on that might much better have swung in his stead.”