Page:Treasure Island (1909).djvu/33

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TREASURE ISLAND

PART I

THE OLD BUCCANEER

CHAPTER I

THE OLD SEA-DOG 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, 1 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 Benbow2 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;3 a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pig-tail4 falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred,

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