EDWARD ALDEN.--Can some reader tell me if the verse or chorus of a pirate's song, which Robert Louis Stevenson recites several times in whole or in part in "Treasure Island," was original or quoted; and, if there are other verses, where they may be found? The lines as Stevenson gives them are: Fifteen men on the dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ha and a bottle of rum; Drink and the devil had done for the rest, Yo-ho-ha and a bottle of rum. * * * * * _September 20, 1914._ ANSWERS FROM READERS W. L.--The verse about which Edward Alden inquired in your issue of July 26. and which is quoted in Stevenson's "Treasure Island," is the opening stanza of an old song or chantey of West Indian piracy, which is believed to have originated from the wreck of an English buccaneer on a cay in the Caribbean Sea known as "The Dead Man's Chest." The cay was so named from its fancied resemblance to the old sailors' sea chest which held his scanty belongings. The song or chantey was familiar to deep-sea sailors many years ago. The song is copied from a very old scrapbook, in which the author's name was not given. The verses[12] are as follows: Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! The mate was fixed by the bo'sun's pike An the bo'sun brained with a marlin spike. And the cookie's throat was marked belike It had been clutched by fingers ten, And there they lay, all good dead men, Like break o' day in a boozin' ken-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Fifteen men of a whole ship's list, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Dead and bedamned and their souls gone whist, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! The skipper lay with his nob in gore Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore, And the scullion he was stabbed times four; And there they lay, and the soggy skies Dripped ceaselessly in upstaring eyes, By murk sunset and by foul sunrise-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Ten of the crew bore the murder mark, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! 'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead, Or a gaping hole in a battered head, And the scuppers' glut of a rotting red; And there they lay, ay, damn my eyes, Their lookouts clapped on Paradise, Their souls gone just the contrawise-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!