Treasure Island Part I Chapter I - Dedication and At the "Admiral Benbow"

**Mark Smith** (0:00)
DEDICATION AND CHAPTER I of Treasure Island This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, Please visit librivox.org.
This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina.
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TREASURE ISLAND by ROBERT LOUIS STEPHENSON DEDICATION To S. L. O., 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.
To the Hesitating Purchaser If sailor tales to sailor tunes, storm and adventure, heat and cold, if schooners, islands and maroons, and buccaneers in 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 studieth youth no longer crave, his ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantine the Brave, or Cooper of the Wood in Wave, so be it also, and may I and all my pirates share the grave where these and their creations lie.
Treasure Island Part I The Old Buccaneer Chapter I The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Bembo Squire Trelawney, Dr. 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 seventeensomething, and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Bembo in, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre 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-chess following behind him in a hand-barrow, a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre 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, 15 men on the dead man's chest, you-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, 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 hand-spike 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 situated grug-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 might call me? You might 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, says 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 ends 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 to 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 foghorn, 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 Bembo, as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol, he would look in at him through the curtain door before he entered the parlour, 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.