Duel with Israel Hands
The Duel with Israel Hands is the pivotal action sequence in which Jim Hawkins, alone on the captured schooner Hispaniola, faces and kills the mutinous coxswain Israel Hands, a former gunner of the pirate Captain Flint. This desperate fight, fought on a careening deck and among the rigging, marks Jim's transformation from a cabin boy into a decisive actor capable of lethal violence, and it secures the ship for the loyal party's eventual escape from Treasure Island.
Background and Setting
After Jim Hawkins had cut the Hispaniola adrift from her anchorage and boarded her, he found the ship in the hands of only two men: Israel Hands and a sailor named O'Brien, both drunk and locked in a deadly quarrel. By the time Jim climbed aboard, O'Brien lay dead on the deck, his body stiff and his teeth showing through open lips, while Hands was propped against the bulwarks, wounded and apparently helpless. Jim, acting on his own initiative, struck the Jolly Roger, declared himself captain, and struck a bargain with Hands: he would provide food, drink, and bandages in exchange for Hands's piloting expertise to beach the schooner in North Inlet. For a time, the arrangement held. Hands, though suffering from a deep stab wound in the thigh, directed the navigation with skill, and the Hispaniola ran before a favorable breeze along the coast. But Jim, remembering the treachery he had overheard in the apple barrel, remained watchful. He noticed that Hands's eyes followed him "derisively about the deck" and that an "odd smile" with "a grain of derision, a shadow of treachery" continually played on the coxswain's face.
The Discovery of Hands's Deception
Suspicion drove Jim to test Hands's intentions. When Hands asked him to fetch a bottle of wine from the cabin, claiming the brandy was too strong, Jim saw through the pretext. He pretended to comply, but instead of going below, he slipped off his shoes, crept silently along the sparred gallery, and peered out from the fore companion. What he saw confirmed his worst fears. Hands had risen from his position and was crawling across the deck, despite the obvious pain in his leg. He reached the port scuppers, picked out a long knife—a short dirk, discolored to the hilt with blood—tested its point on his hand, and concealed it in the bosom of his jacket before crawling back to his place. Jim understood at once that Hands meant to kill him.
The Fight on the Deck
Jim returned to the deck with a bottle of wine, pretending ignorance. Hands drank, then asked Jim to cut him a quid of tobacco, claiming he had no knife. Jim complied, but his wariness never slackened. As the Hispaniola approached the shore of North Inlet, Hands issued piloting commands, which Jim obeyed, all the while keeping one eye on the coxswain. The tension broke when the schooner ran aground. The sudden shock canted the deck to port at a forty-five-degree angle, throwing both Jim and Hands into the scuppers. Jim was the first to regain his feet. He sprang into the mizzen shrouds and climbed hand over hand to the cross-trees, just as Hands's dirk struck "not half a foot below" him. From his perch, Jim calmly re-primed his pistols, while Hands, with the dirk in his teeth, began a slow, painful ascent. When Hands was a third of the way up, Jim aimed a pistol and warned him to stop, taunting him with his own pirate maxim: "Dead men don't bite, you know." Hands paused, then, in a sudden motion, threw the dirk over his shoulder. It struck Jim in the shoulder, pinning him to the mast. In the shock and pain, Jim's pistols fired—both of them, involuntarily. Hands, hit, loosed his grip and plunged headfirst into the water.
Aftermath and Significance
Hands rose once to the surface "in a lather of foam and blood" and then sank for good. Jim, looking down, saw him lying "huddled together on the clean, bright sand" in the shadow of the ship, a fish or two whipping past his body. "He was dead enough," Jim reflects, "being both shot and drowned, and was food for fish in the very place where he had designed my slaughter." The duel is a turning point in the novel. Jim, who had begun the adventure as a frightened boy spying from an apple barrel, now acts alone, kills a man, and recaptures the Hispaniola. The fight also completes the destruction of the mutineers' leadership: Hands, the last experienced seaman among them, is gone, and the ship is in the hands of the loyal party. Jim's wound, though painful, is superficial—the dirk had held him "by a mere pinch of skin"—and he soon frees himself, regains the deck, and sets about securing the vessel. The duel thus clears the way for the final confrontation on the island and for the eventual escape of the survivors.
