Kidnapped

serving Mr. Riach and the captain at their supper, when the ship struck something with a great sound, and we heard voices singing out. My two masters leaped to their feet. "She's struck!" said Mr. Riach. "No, sir," said the captain. "We've only run a boat down."

Shaws betrayal → Covenant kidnapping → shipwreck → Appin murder flight → inheritance lawsuit → Rankeillor settlement; Jacobite spine clean, so plot scores 91.

"Well, good-bye," said Alan, and held out his left hand. "Good-bye," said I, and gave the hand a little grasp, and went off down hill. Neither one of us looked the other in the face, nor so long as he was in my view did I take one back glance at the friend I was leaving.

David's Lowland sobriety vs Alan Breck's swaggering Jacobite honour—one of adventure fiction's great pairings—so cast scores 93.

In the afternoon there was a falling swell and a thick, wet, white fog that hid one end of the brig from the other. All afternoon, when I went on deck, I saw men and officers listening hard over the bulwarks—"for breakers," they said

Early Shaws/Lawyer setup and legal coda bracket a mid-book highland chase that rarely flags; Covenant chapters slightly dilated, so pace scores 88.

But as I went on my way to the city, I felt so lost and lonesome, that I could have found it in my heart to sit down by the dyke, and cry and weep like any baby.

Stevenson's first-person confessional voice—'lost and lonesome' at Rest-and-be-Thankful—at peak clarity and restraint, so prose scores 94.

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road

1751 Highland geography (Glencoe, Rannoch Moor, Appin) and Jacobite politics rendered with map-like precision, so world scores 90.

"There," says he, "there's the key of the stair-tower at the far end of the house. Ye can only win into it from the outside, for that part of the house is no finished. Gang ye in there, and up the stairs, and bring me down the chest that's at the top."

Ebenezer Balfour's Shaws house and the tower-stair ambush land fast; less iconically branded than Treasure Island's inn, so hook scores 89.

BEING MEMOIRS OF THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR IN THE YEAR 1751: HOW HE WAS KIDNAPPED AND CAST AWAY; HIS SUFFERINGS IN A DESERT ISLE; HIS JOURNEY IN THE WILD HIGHLANDS; HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH ALAN BRECK STEWART AND OTHER NOTORIOUS HIGHLAND JACOBITES

Historical-boys'-adventure model rather than genre invention; excels within tradition set by Scott and Stevenson's own piracy tale, so innov scores 85.

But as I went on my way to the city, I felt so lost and lonesome, that I could have found it in my heart to sit down by the dyke, and cry and weep like any baby. It was coming near noon when I passed in by the West Kirk and the Grassmarket into the streets of the capital.

Rest-and-be-Thankful farewell without backward glance—understated grief ('cold gnawing') before providential bank arrival, so ending scores 92.