akorn - Mighty Old Tales Retold

Treasure Island - Chapter - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapter XXX - R L Stevenson
I WAS wakened—indeed, we were all wakened, for I could see even the sentinel shake himself together from where he had fallen against the door-post—by a clear, hearty voice hailing us from the margin of the wood:“Block house, ahoy!” it cried. “Here’s the doctor.”And the doctor it was.

Treasure Island - Chapter XXIX - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapter XXIX - R L Stevenson
THE council of buccaneers had lasted some time, when one of them re-entered the house, and with a repetition of the same salute, which had in my eyes an ironical air, begged for a moment’s loan of the torch. Silver briefly agreed, and this emissary retired again, leaving us together in the dark.“There’s a breeze coming, Jim,” said Silver, who had by this time adopted quite a friendly and familiar tone.”

Treasure Island - Chapter XXVIII - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapter XXVIII - R L Stevenson
THE red glare of the torch, lighting up the interior of the block house, showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized. The pirates were in possession of the house and stores: there was the cask of cognac, there were the pork and bread, as before, and what tenfold increased my horror, not a sign of any prisoner. I could only judge that all had perished, and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there to perish with them.

Treasure Island - Chapter XXVII - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapter XXVII - R L Stevenson
OWING to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was in consequence nearer to the ship and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood and then sank again for good. As the water settled, I could see him lying huddled together on the clean, bright sand in the shadow of the vessel’s sides. A fish or two whipped past his body. Sometimes, by the quivering of the water, he appeared to move a little, as if he were trying to rise. But he was dead enough, for all that, being both shot and drowned, and was food for fish in the very place where he had designed my slaughter.

Treasure Island - Chapter XXVI - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapter XXVI - R L Stevenson
THE wind, serving us to a desire, now hauled into the west. We could run so much the easier from the north-east corner of the island to the mouth of the North Inlet. Only, as we had no power to anchor and dared not beach her till the tide had flowed a good deal farther, time hung on our hands. The coxswain told me how to lay the ship to; after a good many trials I succeeded, and we both sat in silence over another meal.“Cap’n,” said he at length with that same uncomfortable smile, “here’s my old shipmate, O’Brien; s’pose you was to heave him overboard. I ain’t partic’lar as a rule, and I don’t take no blame for settling his hash, but I don’t reckon him ornamental now, do you?”

Treasure Island - Chapter XXV - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapter XXV - R L Stevenson
I HAD scarce gained a position on the bowsprit when the flying jib flapped and filled upon the other tack, with a report like a gun. The schooner trembled to her keel under the reverse, but next moment, the other sails still drawing, the jib flapped back again and hung idle.This had nearly tossed me off into the sea; and now I lost no time, crawled back along the bowsprit, and tumbled head foremost on the deck.

Treasure Island - Chapter XXIV - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapter XXIV - R L Stevenson
IT was broad day when I awoke and found myself tossing at the south-west end of Treasure Island. The sun was up but was still hid from me behind the great bulk of the Spy-glass, which on this side descended almost to the sea in formidable cliffs.Haulbowline Head and Mizzen-mast Hill were at my elbow, the hill bare and dark, the head bound with cliffs forty or fifty feet high and fringed with great masses of fallen rock. I was scarce a quarter of a mile to seaward, and it was my first thought to paddle in and land.

Treasure Island - Chapters XXII and XXIII - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapters XXII and XXII - R L Stevenson
THERE was no return of the mutineers—not so much as another shot out of the woods. They had “got their rations for that day,” as the captain put it, and we had the place to ourselves and a quiet time to overhaul the wounded and get dinner. Squire and I cooked outside in spite of the danger, and even outside we could hardly tell what we were at, for horror of the loud groans that reached us from the doctor’s patients.

Treasure Island - Chapters XX and XXI - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapters XX and XXI - R L Stevenson
SURE enough, there were two men just outside the stockade, one of them waving a white cloth, the other, no less a person than Silver himself, standing placidly by.It was still quite early, and the coldest morning that I think I ever was abroad in—a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapour taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp, feverish, unhealthy spot.

Treasure Island - Chapters XVIII and XIX - R L Stevenson

Treasure Island
Chapters XVIII and XIX - R L Stevenson
WE made our best speed across the strip of wood that now divided us from the stockade, and at every step we took the voices of the buccaneers rang nearer. Soon we could hear their footfalls as they ran and the cracking of the branches as they breasted across a bit of thicket.I began to see we should have a brush for it in earnest and looked to my priming.“Captain,” said I, “Trelawney is the dead shot. Give him your gun; his own is useless.”