"L'île au trésor" by Robert Louis Stevenson is a novel written in the late 19th century. It tells a swashbuckling adventure in which young Jim Hawkins is swept from an English inn into a dangerous search for a hidden pirate hoard, with a feared one‑legged sailor looming over the quest. Expect sea voyages, mutiny, and moral tests as Jim comes of age amid rogues and treasure. The beginning of the novel follows
Jim at his parents’ inn, the Admiral Benbow, where a scarred old seaman, Billy Bones, takes lodging, drinks heavily, and pays Jim to watch for a one‑legged sailor. After a tense clash with Dr. Livesey and a violent visit from the pirate Chien-Noir, Billy suffers an apoplexy; then the blind Pew arrives and delivers the “black spot,” prompting Billy’s fatal collapse. Jim and his mother open Billy’s sea chest to claim unpaid dues, taking a sealed packet before a gang of pirates sacks the inn; revenue officers arrive, the pirates scatter, and Pew is accidentally trampled to death. Jim brings the packet to Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelawney, who recognize clues tied to the infamous pirate Flint and, on opening Billy’s effects, find a logbook and a sealed document that promise the lead to a great treasure. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Claudine Corbasson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica))
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 80.7 (6th grade). Easy to read.
