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Treasure Island
Trailblazers · 4th–6th
Why does Jim risk everything for one look through the cabin window, and then lie flat in the coracle unable to look at the sea that may kill him?
The tension Jim's plan works: he waits for the wind, cuts the hawser strand by strand, and the Hispaniola swings free. Then, with no reason but a trailing cord and curiosity, he hauls himself up "at infinite risk" to see why nobody has raised the alarm, and finds Hands and the red-cap at each other's throats while the camp sings of drink and the devil. Minutes later the current takes him, and the boy who had to look now shuts his eyes and cannot bear to watch his fate come. The chapter sets curiosity against fear inside one boy and asks which is really steering him.
Notice what pulls Jim forward in the dark: the plan, the wish to look, and the fear he cannot look at.
Jim paddles the coracle through the dark, reaches the Hispaniola's hawser, and cuts it strand by strand as the wind lets him. He grabs a cord, pulls himself up, and looks through the cabin window at Hands and the red-cap locked in a wrestle. Then the current turns and sweeps both ship and coracle toward the open sea. Jim lies flat in the boat and, at last, falls asleep.
Start with Jim's waiting at the hawser. Ask why a boy in a hurry would hold off until the wind comes.
Retell The student tells the chapter back in order: the coracle, the hawser, the voices, the cord, the window, the turn of the current, and the sleep.
Imitate the author After copying the passage, the student writes two sentences of their own: one that says what they did without knowing why, and one that lists three steps they took to do it.
Debate Was Jim's look through the cabin window smart or reckless? Each side gives one quote from the chapter.
Purpose Close by asking what Jim shows about himself when he looks at one danger and shuts his eyes to another.
Easier Read the hawser scene aloud together and talk through discussion questions 1 and 3 only.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions, then have the student write one critical-thinking answer with two pieces of evidence from the chapter.
Harder Ask the student to find one more place where Jim acts from curiosity or from fear, and to add it to a critical-thinking answer.
1. Jim waits, with the hawser half cut, for a puff of wind before the last strands. Why might a boy who is in such a hurry wait?Inference
What it asks It asks what Jim knows about the danger of a cut rope, and what his waiting shows about how he is thinking at this point.
He is being careful. He sees that a hawser cut while tight could throw him and the coracle out of the water.
a taut hawser, suddenly cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse
Then I lay quiet, waiting to sever these last when the strain should be once more lightened by a breath of wind.
He is lucky as much as careful. The wind comes at the right moment, and he says fortune favoured him.
if fortune had not again particularly favoured me, I should have had to abandon my design
At last the breeze came
A strong answer Jim remembers that a taut hawser cut suddenly is as dangerous as a kicking horse, so he cuts all but two strands and waits for the strain to ease. That is careful. But he also says that if fortune had not favoured him he would have had to give up, and the wind comes just when he needs it. A strong answer gives Jim credit for the thinking and notes how much luck he needed.
2. Jim calls the pirates on the shore “as callous as the sea they sailed on.” What does he see that makes him say it?Character
What it asks It asks the student to gather what Jim sees of the pirates, and to ask whether his judgment is fair.
They seem hard and careless: their friends died that morning, yet they sing and drink.
a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a company that had met such cruel losses in the morning
Both men were plainly the worse of drink, and they were still drinking
Jim’s judgment may be hasty. The singing may be a kind of mourning, and he is judging from far off.
Someone was singing, a dull, old, droning sailors song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse
But, indeed, from what I saw
A strong answer Jim sees two men drunk and fighting in the cabin and hears a droning song from the camp after a morning of losses, and he concludes they are callous. A strong answer can agree, since the evidence he has is all drink and quarrelling. It can also ask whether the song could be a kind of mourning, and whether Jim sees enough from the dark to judge.
3. Jim says he can hardly say why he grasped the cord, but then curiosity gets “the upper hand.” What does he seem to want to see through the cabin window?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to name what Jim is after at the window, and to see how much of it is his plan and how much is plain wanting to know.
He wants to know why no one has raised the alarm. His whole plan depends on the answer.
until I got my eye above the window-sill I could not comprehend why the watchmen had taken no alarm
All this time I had heard the sound of loud voices from the cabin
He is a boy who cannot leave a mystery alone, and once he has the cord in his hand he has already begun.
Why I should have done so I can hardly say.
rose at infinite risk to about half my height
A strong answer Jim wants to see why the men in the cabin have not noticed the ship moving, and that matters to his plan. But he also says he can hardly say why he did it, and that it began as mere instinct, so part of the pull is plain curiosity. A strong answer keeps both and says which seems to steer him more.
4. Jim cuts the ship adrift while the two watchmen are drunk and quarrelling below. Is that a clever trick or an unfair one?Moral reasoning
What it asks It asks the student to weigh a boy's use of the pirates' drunkenness against what these men have done.
Clever. The men are enemies who have made their own neglect, and Jim is defending his friends.
Both men were plainly the worse of drink, and they were still drinking
all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed on
Unfair. The men are too drunk to defend the ship, and Jim strikes when they cannot answer.
they were not only tipsy; it was plain that they were furiously angry
each with a hand upon the others throat
A strong answer The watchmen are drunk and fighting each other, which makes the ship easy to take. A strong answer can call it clever, because these are the mutineers and they left their own ship unguarded. It can call it unfair, because they cannot answer. Either way it says what standard of fair play it is using, and whether war changes it.
5. As the song ends, Jim thinks of “drink and the devil” at work in the cabin. Why might the author let the pirates' song comment on the scene?Author's choice
What it asks It asks what a song adds to a scene that the plain telling would not, and why the author puts it here.
It lets Jim say something hard and funny without stopping the story: the song fits the men in the cabin.
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
I was just thinking how busy drink and the devil were at that very moment in the cabin of the Hispaniola
It ties the night to the pirates' own world, which Jim has heard before.
the chorus I had heard so often
I had heard it on the voyage more than once
A strong answer The song is sung by the pirates on shore, but Jim uses its line about drink and the devil to describe the two drunk men he has just seen fighting. That lets the author comment on the pirates in their own words, and it sounds like their world, which Jim knows. A strong answer says what the song adds to the tone of the scene.
1. Using two pieces of evidence, explain how well Jim handles the coracle at the start of the chapter.
What it asks It asks the student to weigh what the coracle can do against what Jim can make it do.
Badly. The boat does what it likes, and Jim is carried by the tide.
She turned in every direction but the one I was bound to go
I am very sure I never should have made the ship at all but for the tide
Well enough. He reaches the hawser and, once there, does what he came to do.
I was alongside of her hawser and had laid hold
With that I made my mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth, and cut one strand after another
A strong answer The coracle is a poor boat to steer: Jim says it turned in every direction but the one he wanted, and he would not have reached the ship but for the tide. Once there, he lays hold of the hawser and cuts strand after strand. A strong answer uses one piece of each kind and says what Jim did well and what was luck.
2. Using two pieces of evidence, explain what Jim learns about the two men in the cabin.
What it asks It asks what Jim hears and sees of Hands and the red-cap, and what it tells him about the ship.
They are drunk and careless, which is why the ship is left unwatched.
Both men were plainly the worse of drink
until I got my eye above the window-sill I could not comprehend why the watchmen had taken no alarm
They are furious with each other, and the quarrel has gone past words.
it was plain that they were furiously angry
locked together in deadly wrestle, each with a hand upon the others throat
A strong answer Jim knows one man as Israel Hands and the other as the red-cap. They are drunk and so furiously angry that oaths fly like hailstones, and when Jim looks in they are locked together with hands at each other’s throats. A strong answer says what this explains: nobody has noticed the ship moving.
3. Using two pieces of evidence, explain how the current changes the night for Jim and for the ship.
What it asks It asks the student to follow how the tide takes charge of both boats in the last part of the chapter.
It takes the choice from Jim: he wanted to cut the ship loose and now both are carried away.
it went spinning through the narrows for the open sea
I lay down flat in the bottom of that wretched skiff
It hurts the pirates too: the quarrel is broken and the ship is out of their hands.
the two drunkards had at last been interrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of their disaster
I could hear feet pounding on the companion ladder
A strong answer The current turns at right angles and sweeps the schooner and the coracle toward the open sea, and Jim lies flat expecting to die in some bar of breakers. On the ship, the two men in the cabin are pulled from their quarrel and realise what has happened. A strong answer picks two pieces and says that the same current changes what both Jim and the pirates can do.