The Island Treasure, or The Black Man's Ghost, by John Conroy Hutcheson.
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Starting with excuses, this book was rather hard to transcribe to
digital format. It was unevenly printed on a rather rough paper, so
that many words were hard to read, even to the naked eye. Several of
the characters in the book spoke in their own dialect or with a heavy
foreign accent, so that many of the words in the book were not words in
the English language. And if that were not all the copy used was
somewhat spotted. But we seem to have come though those trials, and we
present a very readable book.
Another strange matter with the book was that the title on the cover, on
the title page, and at the start of the first chapter was "The Island
Treasure", while thereafter every even-numbered page is headed "The
Black Man's Ghost", which is the title under which the book was
copyrighted.
The story is told from the viewpoint of a young cabin-boy, who had run
away to sea from a good vicarage home. There is a most unpleasant
captain, from the American "Down-East". The first-mate is pretty nasty
too, while the second-mate has a very strong Danish accent, but is a
good man, as is the ship's carpenter. The ship's cook, a black man from
Jamaica, is the protagonist, the ghost.
The ship is wrecked intact on Abingdon Island in the Galapagos, being
carried ashore by a tsunami. There is a lot of treasure on the island,
dating from the buccaneers' time. We will take you no further into the
story, but it is well told, and makes a good read and a good listen.
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THE ISLAND TREASURE, OR THE BLACK MAN'S GHOST, BY JOHN CONROY HUTCHESON.