Treasure Island: Long John Silver

Weeks later, a letter came from the squire in Bristol: he had bought a fine ship called the Hispaniola, and found a crew.Best of all, he wrote, he had met an old sailor with one leg, called Long John Silver, who kept an inn and would sail as the ship’s cook.Silver had even helped him choose most of the crew, and Jim, reading this, felt a sudden cold fear.

Hadn’t the captain told him to watch for a seafaring man with one leg?In Bristol the squire sent Jim with a note to Silver’s inn, the Spy-glass, a bright little tavern near the docks.Silver was tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham, and he moved around the room on a crutch as easily as a bird hops.

He was cheerful and clever, and in a moment Jim was sure that such a pleasant man could not be a pirate.But just then a man at a table near the door jumped up and ran out into the street — it was Black Dog.“Stop him!” cried Jim, and Silver shouted for his men to run after him.

Black Dog escaped, and Silver swore he had never seen the man before, though he had been drinking in his own inn.He looked so honest and so upset about it that Jim believed every word.Silver walked back with Jim to the squire, telling stories about ships and the sea all the way, and Jim thought he had never met a better shipmate.

Only the new captain, Captain Smollett, was unhappy: he did not like the voyage, and he did not trust the crew.“The men know more about this treasure than I do,” he told the squire and the doctor, and he asked them to keep the guns and powder under guard.Then, early one morning, the Hispaniola set sail, and Long John Silver stood on the deck, singing the captain’s old song about the dead man’s chest.