Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Read online

  The Complete Works of

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  (1850-1894)

  Contents

  The Novels

  TREASURE ISLAND

  THE BLACK ARROW

  PRINCE OTTO

  THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

  KIDNAPPED

  THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE

  THE WRONG BOX

  THE WRECKER

  CATRIONA

  THE EBB-TIDE

  WEIR OF HERMISTON

  ST. IVES

  HEATHERCAT

  THE GREAT NORTH ROAD

  THE YOUNG CHEVALIER

  The Short Story Collections

  NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

  MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS - THE DYNAMITER

  THE MERRY MEN AND OTHER TALES AND FABLES

  ISLAND NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS

  FABLES

  TALES AND FANTASIES

  UNCOLLECTED STORIES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Plays

  THE CHARITY BAZAAR

  DEACON BRODIE

  BEAU AUSTIN

  ADMIRAL GUINEA

  MACAIRE

  The Poetry Collections

  A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES

  UNDERWOODS

  BALLADS

  SONGS OF TRAVEL AND OTHER VERSES

  ADDITIONAL POEMS

  NEW POEMS AND VARIANT READINGS

  The Poems

  LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Travel Writing

  AN INLAND VOYAGE

  TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES

  EDINBURGH: PICTURESQUE NOTES

  ESSAYS OF TRAVEL

  ACROSS THE PLAINS

  THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

  THE OLD AND NEW PACIFIC CAPITALS

  The Non-Fiction

  VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE AND OTHER PAPERS

  FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS

  MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

  MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN

  RECORDS OF A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS

  ADDITIONAL MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS

  LATER ESSAYS

  LAY MORALS AND OTHER PAPERS

  PRAYERS WRITTEN FOR FAMILY USE AT VAILIMA

  A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY

  IN THE SOUTH SEAS

  LETTERS FROM SAMOA

  JUVENILIA AND OTHER PAPERS

  PIERRE JEAN DE BÉRANGER ARTICLE

  The Letters

  THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  VAILIMA LETTERS

  The Biographies

  THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON by Sir Graham Balfour

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON by Alexander H. Japp

  THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON FOR BOYS AND GIRLS by Jacqueline M. Overton

  THE LIFE OF MRS. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON by Nellie Van De Grift Sanchez

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2015

  Version 4

  The Complete Works of

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  By Delphi Classics, 2015

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2015.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  Parts Edition Now Available!

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  Did you know you can now purchase the Delphi Classics Parts Edition of this author and enjoy all the novels, plays, non-fiction books and other works as individual eBooks? Now, you can select and read individual novels etc. and know precisely where you are in an eBook. You will also be able to manage space better on your eReading devices.

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  The Novels

  8 Howard Place, Edinburgh – Stevenson’s birthplace

  Stevenson’s parents: Margaret Isabella Balfour and Thomas Stevenson

  Stevenson, aged 7

  TREASURE ISLAND

  This famous novel was serialised in Young Folks magazine between 1881-82 (under the pseudonym Captain George North) and was later published as a book in 1883. Originally, it had been written to amuse Stevenson’s stepson on a rainy holiday in the Scottish Highlands. It was not initially successful as a serial, but became almost an instant classic when it appeared as a book, spawning a new tradition of fast-paced adventure fiction, which inspired many imitators. It almost single-handedly transformed the cultural perception of pirates in fiction, introducing for the first time such paraphernalia as treasure maps marked with an ‘x’, one-legged pirates with pet parrots, the Black Spot and commandeered schooners.

  The story concerns young Jim Hawkins, who helps his mother run the Admiral Benbow Inn near Bristol in the South West of England, during the eighteenth century. A seaman Billy Bones arrives at the Inn. Receiving the dreaded Black Spot, marking him for death, Bones bequeaths the contents of his sea chest to Jim – including a map showing the spot where the treasure of the pirate Captain Flint is buried. When terrifying marauders appear at the Inn in search of the map, Jim manages to convince the local Squire that Bones really was in possession of secret knowledge concerning the treasure’s whereabouts and they form an expedition to go in search of the loot. But, the ship’s cook – a treacherous, one-legged pirate known as Long John Silver – harbours mutinous plans to secure the treasure for himself…

  The original opening of the serial in Young Folks magazine

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  PART I: THE OLD BUCCANEER

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  PART II: THE SEA-COOK

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  PART III: MY SHORE ADVENTURE

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  PART IV: THE STOCKADE

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  PART V: MY SEA ADVENTURE

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII


  PART VI: CAPTAIN SILVER

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  Poster for the first ‘talkie’ adaptation of the film, 1934

  Video cover of the popular 1950 film adaptation starring Bobby Driscoll and Robert Newton

  TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER

  If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons And Buccaneers and buried Gold, And all the old romance, retold Exactly in the ancient way, Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of to-day:

  — So be it, and fall on! If not, If studious youth no longer crave, His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, Or Cooper of the wood and wave: So be it, also! And may I And all my pirates share the grave Where these and their creations lie!

  TO

  LLOYD OSBOURNE

  An American Gentleman

  In accordance with whose classic taste

  The following narrative has been designed

  It is now, in return for numerous delightful hours

  And with the kindest wishes, dedicated

  By his affectionate friend

  THE AUTHOR

  PART I: THE OLD BUCCANEER

  CHAPTER I

  AT THE “ADMIRAL BENBOW”

  Squire Trelawney, Doctor Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17 — , and go back to the time when my father kept the “Admiral Benbow” Inn, and the brown old seaman, with the saber cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.

  I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pig-tail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

  “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”

  I remember him as if it were yesterday as he came plodding to the inn door

  in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.

  “This is a handy cove,” says he, at length; “and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?”

  My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.

  “Well, then,” said he, “this is the berth for me. Here you, matey,” he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; “bring up alongside and help up my chest. I’ll stay here a bit,” he continued. “I’m a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what you’re at — there”; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. “You can tell me when I’ve worked through that,” said he, looking as fierce as a commander.

  And, indeed, bad as his clothes were, and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper, accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the “Royal George”; that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And that was all we could learn of our guest.

  He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove, or upon the cliffs, with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlor next the fire, and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to; only look up sudden and fierce, and blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day, when he came back from his stroll, he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that made him ask this question; but at last we began to see he was desirous to avoid them. When a seaman put up at the “Admiral Benbow” (as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol), he would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlor; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter; for I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms.

  He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my “weather eye open for a seafaring man with one leg,” and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first of the month came round, and I applied to him for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at me, and stare me down; but before the week was out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my fourpenny piece, and repeat his orders to look out for “the seafaring man with one leg.”

  How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house, and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch, was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.

  But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call for glasses round, and force all the trembling company to listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house shaking with “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” all the neighbors joining in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the most overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for silence all around; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question, or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not following his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.

  His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories they were; about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his own account, he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea; and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life; and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a “true sea-dog,” and a “real old salt,” and such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible a
t sea.

  In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us; for he kept on staying week after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to insist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor father out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such a rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.

  All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of his hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it was a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of his coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before the end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter, and he never spoke with any but the neighbors, and with these, for the most part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us had ever seen open.

  He was only once crossed, and that was toward the end, when my poor father was far gone in a decline that took him off. Doctor Livesey came late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my mother, and went into the parlor to smoke a pipe until his horse should come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old “Benbow.” I followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow, and his bright, black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he — the captain, that is — began to pipe up his eternal song:

  “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest — Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest — Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”