Treasure Island

All was clear to probation. The cache had been found and rifled; the seven hundred thousand pounds were gone! Silver never moved; he watched them, very upright on his crutch, and looked as cool as ever I saw him.

Map→mutiny→stockade→treasure rifled→Silver pivots: adventure engine clean; empty pit twist earned when Silver reads the hollow first, so plot scores 92.

He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my "weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg" and let him know the moment he appeared.

Jim's fear of the one-legged man; Livesey facing Billy's knife; Silver's charm/threat duality at the hollow — each type fixed early, so cast scores 94.

Often I have heard the house shaking with "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum," all the neighbours joining in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark.

Six-part structure keeps sea/shore beats alternating; inn mystery to island siege with little dead air for a book of this length, so pace scores 91.

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest"; cove/inn voice vivid; the shanty at the Benbow typifies Stevenson's lean adventure prose, so prose scores 90.

When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow (as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlour.

Inn→Bristol→island geography (Spy-glass, stockade) readable from the first chapter's coast road and cove; pirate code lightly sketched but place-names legible, so world scores 88.

I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked, old, wild sea-songs.

Yo-ho-ho at the Admiral Benbow + weather-eye for a one-legged seaman — classic open that fuses shanty, omen, and Jim's POV dread, so hook scores 95.

Squire Trelawney, Dr. 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, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17—.

Founding template for modern pirate romance; boy-narrator frame and sea-shanty omen became genre defaults — definitive rather than avant-garde, so innov scores 86.

"Dig away, boys," said Silver with the coolest insolence; "you'll find some pig-nuts and I shouldn't wonder." "Pig-nuts!" repeated Merry, in a scream. "Mates, do you hear that? I tell you now, that man there knew it all along."

Rifled cache + Silver's cool insolence ("pig-nuts") then survival bargain — memorable close when the treasure is gone but the villain keeps his head, so ending scores 90.