Book excerpt: Dead Man's Chest is a classic pirate yarn that begins with long John Silver's escape from the merchantman Hispaniola at Peurta Plata and culminates with the American Revolution more than a decade later. It describes in rich detail the unholy alliance formed between this soft-hearted cut-throut, his teenage nephew, David Noble, and the slaver-turned-merchant captain, John Paul Jones to retrieve a king's ransom of Spanish gold and jewels from Dead Man's Chest; the other two-thirds of the treasure described in Stevenson's novel, and the inspiration for the sailor's ballad by the same name. Dead Man's Chest explains how the Scottish fugitive John Paul Jones earned a naval commission. More importantly, the novel illuminates a hitherto unknown thirty-month period in John Paul's career. From November 1773 when he killed a mutineer to June 1775 when he received his naval commission in Philadelphia from Thomas Jefferson. Learn how the contract that he and John Silver made with the American founding fathers impacted the lives of the Colonists and ultimately helped win America's freedom from Mother England.