Robert
Louis
Stevenson
(1850
–
1894)
Born
in
Edinburgh,
Scotland,
UK.
He
studied
at
Edinburgh,
dropped
the
profession
of
lawyer
and
began
to
write
travel
sketches
and
short
stories.
He
wrote
Treasure
Island
(1883),
Kidnapped
(1886),
The
Strange
Case
of Dr
Jekyll
and
Mr
Hyde
(1886),
The
Master
of
Ballantrae
(1889),
the
unfinished
Weir
of
Hermiston
(1896),
others.
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, 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 Benbow" 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; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pig-tail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:
