Amazingly, I passed four decades on this Earth without ever having read
[btitle “Treasure Island”] until just this month, when I read it aloud to
my son, David. I tried to read it once when I was a kid, but didn’t get
far; when Billy Bones was given the Black Spot I got depressed and put the
book down, having become quite attached to that sullen old gentleman of
fortune. On top of that, given what little I remember of that first
attempt, I think I might have been reading an abridgement or adaptation
of some kind; either that, or I was retaining only about a third of the
words.

Anyway, it turns out to be a fine adventure tale in the old tradition;
old, in that the pirates are indisputably bad, and the good guys
indisputably good, if not always entirely wise. It was rather
refreshing, actually. The prose was rather over David’s head, I fear,
and I was continually having to explain bits to him, but once I did he
enjoyed it thoroughly.

I think the bit that amazed me most was Long John Silver. I’d formed the
impression of Silver as your typical pirate captain, with a cocked hat
and a parrot and a pegleg, and somehow I had the notion that Silver and
Jim Hawkins went off to search for the treasure together, as good
comrades-in-arms–in short, that Silver was something of a hero.

The reality is somewhat different. Silver has the pegleg, and the parrot,
oh yes, and he goes off to search for treasure with Jim Hawkins; and
for part of the book the pirates regard him as their captain. But there’s
absolutely nothing of the hero about him. Instead he’s a quite plausible
rogue, as Jack Aubrey might say, with one eye on the main chance and the
other on the door, and if he has a silver tongue he has two faces with
which to wield it. A cunning fellow, indeed, but thoroughly contemptible.

How did I ever get the idea that Long John Silver was one of the good
guys? I really have no idea.