"Them that dies will be the lucky ones!"

The Last Stand: A desperate attempt by a small group to defend a specific location against a larger force.

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It's a trope that fiction writers and film makers have used time and time again. It shows up perhaps most often in Westerns and war stories, but it pops up from time to time in other genres as well.

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When done well, a last stand sequence can be intensely exciting. One of the best can be found in what may still be the best ever adventure novel.


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Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island is pretty much the granddaddy of all good pirate stories. Narrated (with the exception of a couple of chapters) by young Jim Hawkins, it generates a true sense of adventure as Jim and a few friends battle the villianous Long John Silver and his bloodthirsty pirates. Everyone's goal--the recovery of a buried treasure.

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The novel is almost soley responsible for just about every modern image we have of pirates--from speech patterns to the concept of buried treasure. It also contains some excellent characterizations in Jim and John Silver and wraps their increasingly complicated relationship around a cracking good story.

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One of the most famous action set-pieces comes about half-way through the novel, when good guys have taken up residence in an old stockade located on the island. They are surrounded and outnumbered by the pirates, who also control the ship at this point. But the good guys have something the pirates have to have--the map showing where the treasure is buried.

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Silver tries to negotiate for the map, but he's rebuffed. Vowing "them that dies will be the lucky ones" (one of the best bits of dialogue in literary history), he marches off to organize an attack on the stockade.

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And that sets up the "last stand" sequence, as the heroes attempt to desperately fight off the pirates. At first, they stay in the cabin, popping away with muskets. But when the pirates get close enough to whack a couple of them, there's no choice but to snatch up cutlasses and "fight 'em in the open!"

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It's a great sequence--along with Jim's later hijacking of the ship and confrontation with Isreal Hands, it's one of the highlights of the book.

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Treasure Island's last stand scene is only a few pages long, but it's exciting, intense and succeeds in carrying the plot as a whole along nicely. It's also a effective snapshot of just how good a book in its entirety Treasure Island is. If you've never read it, please take a moment to feel ashamed of yourself, then run right out and get a copy.