9029mQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me towrite 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 stilltreasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the timewhen my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cutfirst took up his lodging under our roof.I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his seachest following behind him in a hand-barrow-a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, histarry pigtail falling over the shoulder 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.

Iremember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and thenbreaking 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!"