My name is Jim. My story begins when an old sailor came to the inn (小旅馆) where I lived with my father. My father was the innkeeper.

“Do many people came here?” the old sailor asked my father.

“No,” my father told him. “It is a very quiet place.”

“Good,” the old sailor said. “Then this is a place for me.”

“And what’s your name, sir?” my father asked him.

“Just call me ‘captain’,” the man said.

He put some gold coins on the table. “Tell me when I have spent all these,” he said.

Not long after he came to the inn, the captain said to me, “Do you want to earn some money?”

“Yes, please,” I answered. I was only a boy at the time and never had any money. “What do you want me to do?”

“Keep watch for a man with one leg.” he said, “Tell me as soon as you see him. Do that and I’ll give you a coin every week.”

At first, the Captain was a very quiet man and did not want to talk to anyone. But there were nights when he drank a lot of rum. Then he talked a lot and became very noisy. He told stories about bad men doing bad things, and he sang the same song over and over again at the top of his voice, “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest. Yo-hap-ho! And a bottle of rum.”

My father wanted him to leave because some visitors stopped coming to the inn. But, even when the gold was spent, my father didn’t dare to tell him to leave.

Then father became ill, and Dr. Livesey came to see him. After giving my father some medicine, the doctor came into the inn. When the doctor waited for a man to bring his horse. The Captain started singing the same song again.

The doctor asked him to be quiet. “There was a sick man here,” he said angrily.

The Captain took out his knife and pointed it at the doctor.

“Put that knife down, man,” the doctor said. “And if you keep drinking rum, you’ll soon be dead.”

The Captain was very angry. He began to move toward the doctor.

“Keep away from me. If you do anything bad, you’ll be in trouble.” said the doctor.

Then the doctor’s horse came, and he rode away from the inn. For a few days after this, the Captain was quiet.