# Kidnapped (Stevenson, 1895)

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A fast-moving historical fiction adventure story. Written as a "boys novel" and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886, the novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges and Seamus Heaney. A sequel, Catriona, was published in 1893. The novel has been adapted into numerous films, television serials and comic books.
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THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR.
PART ONE:
KIDNAPPED.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes.
An Island Voyage.
Travels with a Donkey.
Virginibus Puerisque.
Familiar Studies of Men and Books.
New Arabian Nights.
Treasure Island.
The Silverado Squatters.
A Child’s Garden of Verses.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The Black Arrow.
Prince Otto.
The Merry Men.
Underwoods.
Memories and Portraits.
The Master of Ballantrae.
Father Damien; an Open Letter.
Ballads.
Across the Plains.
A Footnote to History.
Island Nights’ Entertainments.
The Adventures of David Balfour. Part II.: Catriona.
(With Mrs. Stevenson.)
More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter.
(With Mr. Lloyd Osbourne.)
The Wrong Box.
The Wrecker.
The Ebb Tide.
THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR
KIDNAPPED
BEING
THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR
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; with all that he suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself, and now set forth by
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
With SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATONS by W. B. HOLE, R.S.A.
FORTY-FIFTH THOUSAND
CASSELL and COMPANY, Limited
LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE
1895
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
DEDICATION.
My dear Charles Baxter,
If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questions than I should care to answer: as for instance how the Appin murder has come to fall in the year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so near to Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touches David Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability to crack. But if you tried me on the point of Alan’s guilt or innocence, I thmk I could defend the reading of the text. To this day you will find the tradition of Appin clear in Alan’s favour. If you inquire, you may even hear that the descendants of “the other man” who fired the shot are in the country to this day. But that other man’s name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it. I might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar’s library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day, has in this new avatar ​no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman’s attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.
As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to like this tale. But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to find his father’s name on the fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets—who may tomorrow open the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and inglorious Macbean—or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places that have now become for your companion a part of the scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of present business, the past must echo in your memory! Let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend,
R. L. S.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth.
CONTENTS.
| chapter | | page |
| I.— | I set off upon my Journey to the House of Shaws | 1 |
| II.— | I come to my Journey’s End | 8 |
| III.— | I make Acquaintance with my Uncle | 16 |
| IV.— | I run a great Danger in the House of Shaws | 27 |
| V.— | I go to the Queen’s Ferry | 38 |
| VI.— | What befell at the Queen’s Ferry | 47 |
| VII.— | I go to Sea in the Brig Covenant of Dysart | 55 |
| VIII.— | The Round-House | 66 |
| IX.— | The Man with the Belt of Gold | 74 |
| X.— | The Siege of the Round-House | 87 |
| XI.— | The Captain Knuckles Under | 97 |
| XII.— | I hear of the Red Fox | 104 |
| XIII.— | The Loss of the Brig | 117 |
| XIV.— | The Islet | 126 |
| XV.— | The Lad with the Silver Button: Through the Isle of Mull | 139 |
| XVI.— | The Lad with the Silver Button: Across Morven | 151 |
| XVII.— | The Death of the Red Fox | 162 |
| XVIII.— | I talk with Alan in the Wood of Lettermore | 171 |
| XIX.— | The House of Fear | 183 |
| XX.— | The Flight in the Heather: The Rocks | 193 |
| XXI.— | The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of Corrynakiegh | 206 |
| XXII.— | The Flight in the Heather: The Moor | 217 |
| XXIII.— | Cluny’s Cage | 228 |
| XXIV.— | The Flight in the Heather: The Quarrel | 240 |
| XXV.— | In Balquhidder | 255 |
| XXVI.— | End of the Flight: We pass the Forth | 265 |
| XXVII.— | I come to Mr. Rankeillor | 281 |
| XXVIII.— | I go in Quest of my Inheritance | 293 |
| XXIX.— | I come into my Kingdom | 304 |
| XXX.— | Good-bye! | 314 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE :
| Sketch of the Cruise of the Brig Covenant, and the probable course of David Balfour’s wanderings Frontispiece ||
| “A main entrance it was plainly meant to be, but never finished” | 12 |
| “And then there came a blinding flash” | 35 |
| “Hoseason turned upon him with a flash” | 59 |
| “The man . . . had leaped up, and caught hold of the brig’s bowsprit” | 75 |
| “The song of the sword of Alan” | 94 |
| “Two hands were put to the helm, and Hoseason himself would sometimes lend a help” | 120 |
| “I still cried and waved to them” | 134 |
| “He cursed me once more in Gaelic and took himself off” | 148 |
| “The lawyer had caught him up, and held him in his arms” | 166 |
| “I was now alone upon the rock” | 195 |
| “So we . . . began to slip from rock to rock one after the other’’ | 203 |
| “We were lying on our backs, each with a dirk at his throat” | 225 |
| “And so here’s a toast to ye: ‘The Restoration!’” | 230 |
| “But Robin . . . struck into the slow measure of a pibroch” | 264 |
| “‘It is a very fine lass,’ he said at last” | 280 |
| “And ‘Good evening, Uncle Ebenezer,’ said I” | 311 |
Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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