Treasure Island

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Unabridged read by Alfred Molina

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Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - Unabridged AudioBook CD

Brand New :  Unabridged 6 Audio CDs 7 Hours

Jim Hawkins is a young boy who lives at his parents’ sleepy seaside inn, the "Admiral Benbow", near Bristol, England, in the 18th century (Stevenson writing "in the year of grace 17--"), some time following the year 1745. One day, an old and menacing sea captain referred to as Billy Bones appears and takes a room at the inn. The captain, paying "three or four gold pieces" in advance, stays for "month after month, so that all the money had been long exhausted". One day, an equally menacing figure named Black Dog arrives at the Inn looking for Bill. When the two pirates meet, Jim overhears them arguing in the parlour, and finally the two begin fighting. Billy wounds Black Dog, who flees, but immediately afterwards falls to the ground from a stroke. Bill tells Jim that Black Dog was "a bad 'un" and "mind you, it's my sea chest they're after". He mutters incoherently to Jim about a man named Captain Flint and something he was given the day Flint died at Savannah. Jim's father soon dies, and the day after his funeral a blind pirate, Pew, appears at the inn where he presents the captain with "The Black Spot", a secret pirate message which in this case gives Bones with an ultimatum to be met by ten o'clock that night, on pain of death. The captain dies minutes later of a stroke. Hastily, Jim and his mother unlock Billy’s sea chest (to collect payment for his inn tab; Mrs. Hawkins is determined to take neither more nor less than her due), finding money and a sealed packet inside. Hearing steps outside, they quickly leave with such money as Mrs. Hawkins has managed to count, and Jim snatches the packet as a make-weight since the count is short. They hide while Billy’s pursuers ransack the inn looking for "Flint's fist", but are interrupted: Jim and his Mother had informed the local hamlet of the threat to the inn, and though none of the inhabitants dared come with them, they have sent for help. Soon four or five Revenuers arrive, and Pew is crushed beneath a horse's hooves as his accomplices flee. Most of the other pirates escape in a lugger. Jim realizes that the contents he has snatched from the sea chest must be valuable, so he takes the packet he has found to some local gentry acquaintances, Dr. Livesey and Squire John Trelawney. They find an account book and a map, which they excitedly recognize as a map leading to the fabled treasure of Captain Flint. Trelawney immediately starts planning an expedition. Naïve in his negotiations to outfit his ship, the Hispaniola, Trelawney is tricked into (unwittingly) hiring one of Flint’s former mates, Long John Silver as a cook, as well as many of Flint’s old crew. Only the Captain (Smollett), Dr. Livesey and Trelawney's servants -- Hunter, Joyce and Redruth -- are completely trustworthy, but Trelawney has fallen under the charismatic spell of Silver and believes him to be the better man. Smollett expresses grave misgivings about the voyage declaring that voyages looking for treasure mean trouble. Trelawney has 'blabbed' about the purpose of the voyage to everyone except Smollett, who rightly feels aggrieved. In the beginning there is tension between Smollett and Trelawney. The ship sets sail for the treasure island with nothing amiss except the seemingly-accidental loss of Mr Arrow, Smollett's first mate, who had no authority over the crew and appeared to be an alcoholic. Later, however, Jim overhears Silver’s plans for mutiny while hiding in an apple barrel. Jim tells the captain about Silver and the rest of the rebellious crew. Captain Smollett is vindicated in the eyes of the others, particularly Trelawney, and becomes the leader of the "faithful crew".

Landing at the island, Captain Smollett devises a plan to get most of the mutineers off the ship, allowing them leisure time on shore. Without telling his companions, Jim sneaks into the pirates’ boat and goes ashore with them. Frightened of the pirates, Jim runs off alone into the forest. From a hiding place, he witnesses Silver’s murder of a sailor (Tom) who refuses to join the pirate. Jim flees deeper into the heart of the island, where he encounters a half-crazed man named Ben Gunn. Ben had once served in Flint’s crew but was marooned alone on the island three years earlier. Meanwhile, after persuading would-be mutineer Abraham Gray to change sides, Smollett and his men have gone ashore and taken shelter in a stockade that Flint had built years earlier. En route they have suffered the loss of Redruth during a skirmish. Jim makes his way to the stockade and tells of his encounter with Ben. Silver visits under a white flag of truce and attempts a negotiation with the captain, but Smollett deliberately goads him into a shouting match, knowing that a pirate attack is likely sooner or later and that it may as well be sooner, while it is expected. The pirates attack the stockade within the hour, and are driven off with serious losses, but the captain is wounded and Joyce and Hunter are killed. Eager to take action, Jim follows another whim and deserts his companions, sneaking off to hunt for Ben’s handmade coracle hidden in the woods.

After finding Ben’s boat, Jim sails out to the anchored ship with the intention of cutting it adrift, thereby depriving the pirates of a means of escape. He cuts the rope, but he realizes his small boat has drifted near the pirates’ camp and fears he will be discovered. By chance, the pirates do not spot Jim, and he floats around the island until he catches sight of the ship drifting wildly. Struggling aboard, he discovers that watchman Israel Hands has killed the other watchman in a drunken fit and is seriously injured. Jim takes control of the ship while Hands feigns helplessness, but Hands then tries to kill him. A fight ensues in which Jim's nimbleness saves him from the wounded pirate, and though Jim is wounded he manages to kill Hands. After grounding the ship, Jim returns to the stockade at night not realizing it has since been occupied by the pirates. Silver takes Jim hostage, telling the boy that the captain has given the pirates the treasure map, provisions, and the use of the stockade in exchange for their lives. Silver is having trouble managing his men, who accuse him of treachery. Silver proposes to Jim that they help each other survive by pretending Jim is a hostage. However, the men present Silver with a black spot and inform him that he has been deposed as their commander. In a skilled attempt to gain control of his crew, Silver slyly shows them the treasure map to appease them, narrowly saving Jim's life (and Silver's) from the fickle pirates. Silver is unanimously re-elected as captain, to cries of "Silver!" and "Barbecue forever! Barbecue for cap'n!" The next day Silver leads Jim and the last five pirates to the treasure site, but they are shocked to find it already excavated and the treasure removed except for two guineas. The pirates are enraged and ready to kill Silver and Jim once and for all. At that moment Dr. Livesey, Ben Gunn, and Abraham Gray appear from the bushes and fire on the pirate band, killing two and scattering three others. Silver at this point has switched sides yet again, and because he saved Jim's life earlier, is accepted warily back into the group.

After spending three days carrying the loot from Ben's cave to the ship, the surviving men prepare to set sail for home. There is a debate about the fate of the remaining mutineers, who appear on the shoreline as the ship is setting sail. Despite the three pirates’ pleas, they are left marooned on the island, perhaps a kinder fate than returning them home to the gibbet, and much to the glee of Ben Gunn. Silver is allowed to join the voyage to a nearby Spanish American port, where he sneaks off the ship one night with the help of Ben Gunn carrying a small portion of the treasure and is never heard of again. The voyage home is uneventful. Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey resume their business as usual, despite being thousands of pounds richer. Captain Smollett retires from the sea on his share and lives peacefully in the country. Abraham Gray wisely decides to invest his share in building a career as an honest seaman, and applies himself so well to his trade that he is master and part-owner of a ship of his own by the time Hawkins begins his memoirs. Ben Gunn spends all of his money within nineteen days and soon falls back upon begging. However, he is given a small pension and a lodge to keep by the Squire (exactly the fate he had claimed to detest while still a maroon) and settles into village life, apparently as the local buffoon but generally liked. Jim Hawkins is able to run the "Admiral Benbow" on his own, but suffers in a deeper way from his time on the island and is haunted by memories. "The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know, where Flint buried them ... [but] oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are when I hear the surf booming about its coasts or start upright in bed with the sharp voice of Captain Flint [Silver's talking parrot] still ringing in my ears: 'Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!'"

About the Author Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850, to Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), a leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife Margaret, born Margaret Isabella Balfour (1829–1897). Lighthouse design was the family profession: Thomas's own father was the famous Robert Stevenson, and his maternal grandfather, Thomas Smith, and brothers Alan and David were also among those in the business. On Margaret's side, the family were gentry, tracing their name back to an Alexander Balfour, who held the lands of Inchrye in Fife in the fifteenth century. Her father, Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton, and Robert Lewis Stevensonspent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his house. "Now I often wonder", says Stevenson, "what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them."Both Balfour and his daughter had a "weak chest" and often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Robert Lewis Stevensoninherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp and chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1853. The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Robert Lewis Stevensonwas six, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was eleven. Illness would be a recurrent feature of his adult life, and left him extraordinarily thin. Contemporary views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis or even sarcoidosis. Stevenson's parents were both devout and serious Presbyterians, but the household was not unusually strict. His nurse, Alison Cunningham (known as Cummy), was more fervently religious. Her Calvinism and folk beliefs were an early source of nightmares for the child; and he showed a precocious concern for religion. But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him as he lay sick in bed from Bunyan and the Bible, and telling tales of the Covenanters. Robert Lewis Stevensonrecalled this time of sickness in the poem "The Land of Counterpane" in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) and dedicated the book to his nurse.

An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Robert Lewis Stevensonfound it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at six, a pattern repeated at eleven, when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays at the Colinton manse. In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, and he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He was a late reader, first learning at seven or eight; but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse. Throughout his childhood he was compulsively writing stories. His father was proud of this interest: he had himself written stories in his spare time until his own father found them and told him to "give up such nonsense and mind your business". He paid for the printing of Robert's first publication at sixteen, an account of the covenanters' rebellion, published on its two hundredth anniversary, The Pentland Rising: a Page of History, 1666 (1866). In late summer 1873, on a visit to a cousin in England, Robert Lewis Stevensonmade two new friendships that were to be of great importance to him, Sidney Colvin and Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell. Sitwell was a woman of thirty four, with a young son, separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who would eventually marry her in 1901. Robert Lewis Stevensonwas another of those drawn to her, and over several years they kept up a heated correspondence, in which Stevenson wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he came to address her as "Madonna"). Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser, and after his death was the first editor of his letters. Soon after their first meeting he had placed Stevenson's first paid contribution, as essay "Roads" in The Portfolio. He was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, and Leslie Stephen, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine, who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen in turn would introduce him to a more important friend: visiting Edinburgh in 1875, he took Robert Lewis Stevensonwith him to visit a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary, William Henley. Henley, an energetic and talkative man with a wooden leg, became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator for many years, until in 1888 a quarrel broke up the friendship. He is often seen as providing a partial model for the character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

In November 1873, Robert Lewis Stevensonhad a physical collapse and was sent for his health to Menton on the French Riviera. He returned in better health in April 1874, and settled down to his studies, but he would often return to France in the coming years. He made long and frequent trips to the neighbourhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau, staying at Barbizon, Grez-sur-Loing and Nemours, becoming a member of the artists' colonies there, as well as to Paris to visit galleries and the theatres.He also made the journeys described in An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. In addition, he wrote 20 or more articles and essays for various magazines. Although it seemed to his parents that he was wasting his time and being idle, in reality he was constantly studying to perfect his style of writing and broaden his knowledge of life, emerging as a man of letters.

Robert Lewis Stevensonand Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne (1840-1914) met at Grez in September, 1876. Born in Indianapolis, she had married at the age of seventeen and soon moved with her husband, Samuel Osbourne, to California. She had three children by the marriage, Isobel, the eldest, Lloyd and Hervey (who died in 1875); but anger over infidelities by her husband led to a number of separations and in 1875 she had taken her children to France, where she and Isobel studied art. Although Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote an essay "On falling in love" for the Cornhill Magazine. They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Robert Lewis Stevensonspent much of the following years with her and her children in France. Then, in August 1878, Fanny returned to her home in San Francisco, California. Robert Lewis Stevensonat first remained in Europe, making the walking trip that would form the basis for Travels with a Donkey; but in August 1879, he set off to join her, against the advice of his friends and without notifying his parents. He took second class passage on the Devonian, in part to save money, but also to learn how others travelled and to increase the adventure of the journey. From New York City he travelled overland by train to California. He later wrote about the experience in The Amateur Emigrant. Although it was good experience for his literature, it broke his health, and he was near death when he arrived in Monterey. He was nursed back to health by some ranchers there.

By December 1879 he had recovered his health enough to continue to San Francisco, where for several months he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts," in an effort to support himself through his writing, but by the end of the winter his health was broken again, and he found himself at death's door. Vandegrift — now divorced and recovered from her own illness — came to Stevenson's bedside and nursed him to recovery. "After a while," he wrote, "my spirit got up again in a divine frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success." When his father heard of his condition he cabled him money to help him through this period. On the death of his father in 1887, Robert Lewis Stevensonfelt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate. He started with his mother and family for Colorado; but after landing in New York they decided to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. During the intensely cold winter Robert Lewis Stevensonwrote a number of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra, he began The Master of Ballantrae, and lightheartedly planned, for the following summer, a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean. "The proudest moments of my life," he wrote, "have been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat with that romantic garment over my shoulders."

In June 1888, Robert Lewis Stevensonchartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The vessel "plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help." The salt sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health; and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, visiting important island groups, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands where he became a good friend of King David Kalakaua, with whom Robert Lewis Stevensonspent much time. Furthermore, Robert Lewis Stevensonbefriended the king's niece Princess Victoria Kaiulani, who was of Scottish heritage. He also spent time at the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti and the Samoan Islands. During this period he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp. The experience of these years is preserved in his various letters and in The South Seas. A second voyage on the Equator followed in 1889 with Lloyd Osbourne accompanying them.It was also from this period that one particular open letter stands as testimony to his activism and indignation at the pettiness of such 'powers that be' as a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu named Rev. Dr. Hyde. During his time in the Hawaiian Islands, Robert Lewis Stevensonhad visited Molokai and the leper colony there, shortly after the demise of Father Damien. When Dr. Hyde wrote a letter to a fellow clergyman speaking ill of Father Damien, Robert Lewis Stevensonwrote a scathing open letter of rebuke to Dr. Hyde. Soon afterwards in April 1890 Robert Lewis Stevensonleft Sydney on the Janet Nicoll and went on his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - Unabridged AudioBook CD