Treasure Island – Week 1

Life for Jim Hawkins is fixing to get exciting! One day a strange gentleman shows up at the inn that is run by the Hawkins family, and laying down some gold pieces, moves himself in. He makes a deal with Jim to keep his eyes open for a one legged pirate, and pays the boy a little each month to keep watch. While the time goes by, the Captain as he becomes known scares and delights the neighbors with his dark tales and rowdy singing, all while drinking rum. For a while, this become the norm, but then Jim’s father becomes ill, and the Captain has a stroke at about the same time. With the two men laid low, the doctor is kept busy.

But everything changes one day when a blind pirate shows up looking for the Captain. He presses a card into his hand and then leaves quickly. The Captain, still recovering from his stroke, takes one look at the card, and then quickly falls dead on the floor. With Jim’s father having died not long before the Captain, things are already unclear for the future, but now they have another dead body on the premises. Jim’s mother is determined to get what she is owed from the Captain, and so she and Jim turn out the trunk in his room looking for a little money to pay what they are due. As they are finishing up, they hear noises coming from below. It is a group of pirates come back to get the Captain. Jim and his mother take what they can grab, and then leave the Inn. They do not get very far before Jim’s mother faints from fear, and hiding her and himself under a bridge near the inn, he sees the pirates return and go through the Inn, looking for something that the Captain had kept hidden. Not finding what they are looking for and being scared off by approaching noise to the Inn, the pirates are angry.

Hiding in his shirt, Jim has something that could turn the fortunes of both himself and his mother, and lead on a grand adventure….

This week we are reading Chapters 1-9

Questions:

1. Why do you think Jim’s father allowed the Captain to stay, even after he quit paying?
2. Do you think Jim and Dr. Livesey should have trusted the squire?
3. If you were in charge of the ship, would you have found a different crew?