Flint's Burial of the Treasure

Flint's Burial of the Treasure is the primal scene of violence and concealment that generates the entire plot of Treasure Island. It is the act that transforms a remote island into a repository of blood-soaked gold, creates the map that passes from Billy Bones to Jim Hawkins, and establishes the pattern of treachery and murder that the later treasure-hunters will inherit. The event is never narrated directly but is reconstructed through the testimony of Ben Gunn, the physical evidence left on the island, and the superstitious terror it inspires in the surviving buccaneers.

The Murder of the Six Assistants

According to Ben Gunn, who was a crewman on Flint's ship the Walrus at the time, Flint went ashore with six strong seamen and was gone for nearly a week while the ship stood off and on. One day the signal went up, and Flint returned alone in a little boat, his head bound in a blue scarf, looking "mortal white about the cutwater." The six men were all dead and buried. How Flint, a single man, killed six armed sailors was a mystery that none aboard could solve—"battle, murder, and sudden death, leastways—him against six." Billy Bones, then the mate, and Long John Silver, the quartermaster, questioned Flint about the treasure's location, but Flint refused to disclose it, telling them they could go ashore and stay if they liked, but the ship would "beat up for more." The skeleton of one of the six, later identified by Silver as Allardyce, was found years afterward by the treasure-hunters, laid out perfectly straight with its feet pointing toward Skeleton Island and its hands raised above its head like a diver's, pointing in the opposite direction—a deliberate compass bearing set by Flint as a "pointer" to the treasure's location. Silver recognized this as one of Flint's jokes, and the discovery chilled the pirates, for it proved that Flint had not only killed his men but had arranged their remains as a macabre navigational aid.

The Burial and the Map

Flint buried the treasure—seven hundred thousand pounds in gold, silver, and coin—somewhere on the island, marking its location on a map with three red crosses and a note reading "Bulk of treasure here." The map also included bearings: "Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to the N. of N.N.E. Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E. Ten feet." The bar silver was placed in a separate cache in the north, and the arms were hidden in a sand-hill at the north point of the north inlet cape. The map was sealed in an oilskin packet and given to Billy Bones by Flint himself at Savannah, when Flint lay dying. Bones kept the packet in his sea-chest, where it was discovered by Jim Hawkins and his mother after Bones's death, and it was this map that led Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and Jim to organize the voyage to Treasure Island.

The Physical Evidence on the Island

The treasure pit itself, when finally reached by the pirates, showed clear signs of Flint's work. The excavation was not recent—its sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. Inside lay a broken pick-axe shaft and the boards of several packing-cases, one of which was branded with the name Walrus—Flint's ship. The cache had been found and rifled, but not by the pirates: Ben Gunn had discovered the skeleton, dug up the treasure, and carried it to his cave on the two-pointed hill two months before the Hispaniola arrived. The broken pick-axe was the one Ben Gunn had used. The skeleton itself, which Ben Gunn had rifled, was the remains of Allardyce, one of Flint's six victims, and the fact that no knife or personal effects lay beside it confirmed that Flint had stripped the body before arranging it as a pointer.

The Legacy of Terror

Flint's burial of the treasure left a legacy of superstitious dread that haunted the pirates throughout their own treasure-hunt. When they encountered the skeleton laid out by compass, they spoke in hushed tones of Flint's cruelty and his blue face, and the memory of his death—raging, hollering for rum, and singing "Fifteen Men on the Dead Man's Chest"—terrified them. Later, when Ben Gunn, impersonating Flint's ghost, sang the same song from the woods and called out "Darby M'Graw! Fetch aft the rum, Darby!" the pirates were paralyzed with fear, believing Flint's spirit had returned. Only Silver's quick thinking—pointing out that a ghost would have no echo—restored their courage. The treasure, buried in blood and secrecy, thus became not only a source of wealth but a symbol of the violence and treachery that defined the buccaneer life, and its discovery cost the lives of seventeen men from the Hispaniola alone.