Stevenson hoped that this story would please young people. It was, he explained, a story of sailors, storms and adventures, heat and cold, sailingships, islands, pirates and buried gold all told in the old way. It is the story of the bloodthirsty and hardhearted Captain Flint who, on his deathbed in 1754, drew the map of an island where he had buried his treasure seven hundred thousand pounds in silver and gold. Young Jim Hawkins is living with his father and mother when he meets the mysterious old seaman Billy Bones the man who holds Flint's map of Treasure Island. Jim is drawn into a series of bloody adventures, which cost the lives of seventeen men and more and involve the evil old seaman Pew, Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, poor Ben Gunn, and the onelegged, twofaced Long John Silver, whose green talking parrot knows more than it should when it echoes the treasurecry of Captain Flint: "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!"