What happens in Chapter 4 of Treasure Island?
With the old captain Billy Bones gone after a second stroke, Jim Hawkins and his mother spring into action: they need to search his sea-chest before the blind beggar Pew and his associates come back. Jim takes the key from around the dead man’s neck, and together they open the chest in the upstairs room of the Admiral Benbow inn. Inside, they find the usual sailor's belongings—clothes, a quadrant, a tin can—until Jim's mother reaches the bottom and uncovers a bundle of papers and a hefty oilskin packet. She insists on taking only what Bones owed her in back rent, methodically counting out the coins by candlelight while Jim anxiously listens for any approaching footsteps. When she can't find any more exact change, she stops—honestly to a fault—and Jim slips the oilskin packet into his pocket just as a tap-tapping on the road announces Blind Pew's return. The two escape the inn, hiding under a bridge as a group of buccaneers rushes past toward the Admiral Benbow. The chapter ends with Jim clutching the packet, its contents still a mystery but already setting the stage for everything that follows.
Analysis
Stevenson crafts this chapter as a masterclass in domestic suspense: the simple act of counting coins becomes incredibly tense because the mother's strict honesty clashes with the reader's instinct for survival. This tension is the chapter's key element—morality and self-preservation tugging in opposite directions, with Jim caught in the middle. The candlelit chest serves as a threshold object, marking the boundary between the familiar safety of the inn and the violent maritime underworld that is about to engulf Jim's life. Stevenson's pacing is intentionally uneven: long, detailed sentences during the coin-counting stretch time to a crawl, while short, sharp clauses propel the action forward when Pew's tapping is heard. The blind beggar remains offstage but is felt through sound—his stick on the road is more terrifying than any visible threat, a technique that emphasizes sound over sight and engages the reader's imagination. The oilskin packet is never described, creating a narrative gap that shifts desire from the characters to the audience. Themes of light and darkness (the single candle, the night road, the hiding spot under the bridge) set up the moral contrasts that Stevenson will maintain throughout the novel. Jim's first act of independence—pocketing the packet without his mother's knowledge—subtly signals his transition from innkeeper's boy to protagonist.
Key quotes from Chapter 4
“I have here the key, says he. 'Fetch me a candle.' And he held up a great rusty key.”
Jim retrieves the key from Bones's neck, the physical act that initiates the chest's opening and the plot's true ignition.
“My mother said she would not lose money that belonged to her and was ready to dare all dangers, but she would be no thief.”
Stevenson crystallises the mother's moral code at the very moment it threatens both their lives, making her honesty simultaneously admirable and agonising.
“I had begun to feel that I held the key of the whole business in my pocket.”
Jim reflects on the oilskin packet as the gang ransacks the inn below, the line doubling as literal fact and metaphor for his new, irreversible role in events.
Check your understanding
Ask about this work
The reader has this chapter in front of it — the summary, the analysis, the key quotes and the vocabulary — along with the rest of the book’s chapters. Ask what happens and why it matters, or push back on a reading.
It cites the chapter or the line it is working from, and it says so plainly when the guide doesn’t cover something. It’s instructed never to write an essay, a paragraph or an answer for you to hand in, and never to grade anything — it will show you how to approach the question instead.
Sign in to ask the reader about this work — 1 credit covers three messages.
Create an accountSign in