Kidnapped

Summary

Kidnapped is narrated by David Balfour, a seventeen-year-old Lowland Scot who in June 1751, after his father's death, leaves the village of Essendean with a letter for the House of Shaws. The minister Mr. Campbell sends him off with a shilling, a Bible and a handwritten recipe for lily-of-the-valley water, and with the news that he is a Balfour of Shaws. The house proves half-built and cold, and its master, David's uncle Ebenezer, is a miser who fears him. On a stormy night Ebenezer sends David up an unfinished tower stair in the dark, and only a flash of lightning shows the drop where the steps end. Ebenezer then lures him to Queensferry, where the brig Covenant, under Captain Hoseason, carries him off to be sold as a servant in the Carolinas. On board, David witnesses the drunken mate Mr. Shuan beat the cabin boy Ransome to death. When the brig runs down a boat in the fog, the one survivor is Alan Breck Stewart, a Jacobite of the Appin Stewarts carrying rents to his exiled chief. The crew plots to kill Alan for his money belt; David warns him, and the two hold the round-house against the whole crew. The brig is wrecked on the Torran rocks, and David, alone, spends days on the tidal islet of Earraid before learning that he can wade ashore at low water. Crossing Mull and Morven, he arrives in Appin just as the king's agent Colin Campbell of Glenure, the Red Fox, is shot from ambush. David is seen beside Alan and both are hunted as accomplices. Their flight through the heather, down to the hiding place of the outlawed chief Cluny Macpherson, is a long trial of hunger, exhaustion and pride. Ill and resentful, David quarrels bitterly with Alan; when he collapses, Alan's tenderness ends the quarrel and seals their friendship. With help along the way they cross the Forth, and David finds the lawyer Mr. Rankeillor, who confirms that David's father was the elder brother and that the estate is his. Alan stages a ruse at the House of Shaws, Ebenezer admits paying Hoseason to kidnap the boy, and a settlement gives David two-thirds of the income. The friends part on the hill above Edinburgh, and David walks into the city to begin clearing Alan's name and the name of James Stewart, accused of the murder.

Top Lessons

• Friendship across a deep divide

  David is a Lowland Whig loyal to King George and Alan a Highland Jacobite. Their friendship survives political difference because each keeps faith with the other in danger. Stevenson shows loyalty as something proved by deeds rather than shared opinions.

• Pride on the road

  Exhaustion makes David sullen and Alan mocking, and their quarrel nearly ends in swords. Stevenson treats the scene with honesty: both are at fault, and humility on both sides is required to repair it.

• Justice against a usurper

  Ebenezer holds the estate unjustly and tries to remove the heir. David recovers his right through patience, a good lawyer and a trap that brings the truth to light, not by violence.

• Courage that grows

  David begins as a cautious young man who cries in the dark; in the round-house he fires into the attackers and later walks into Edinburgh to testify. Courage in the book grows by being exercised.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The novel is closely observed about bodily hardship: seasickness and fever in the Covenant's hold, Mr. Shuan's drinking ending in a killing, hunger and exposure on Earraid and in the heather, and the illness that brings David to collapse during the quarrel. A Highland doctor treats him in Balquhidder. Readers interested in medicine can follow how hardship affects temper and judgment, which is the hinge of the quarrel scene.

• Chapter VII

  David lies fevered in the dark hold until Mr. Riach, who calls himself more than half a doctor, insists he be moved to the forecastle.

• Chapter VIII

  The drunken mate Mr. Shuan beats the cabin boy Ransome to death, and the officers' later behavior shows the drink and guilt aboard.

• Chapter I

  Mr. Campbell's third gift is a handwritten recipe for lily-of-the-valley water, distilled in sack, said to restore speech in palsy, ease gout and comfort the heart: a glimpse of household remedies of the period, from a plant now known to contain heart-active compounds.

• Chapter XIV

  On Earraid, David lives on raw shellfish and suffers cold, wet and despair.

• Chapter XXIV-XXV

  Exhausted and ill, David collapses after the quarrel; a doctor is fetched in Balquhidder and he is bedridden for a week.