ROBERT Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is one of the great adventure stories of all time. And, like all great stories, it hints at so much more: a whole untold history of the pirate gang so vividly brought to the page.

We want to know more about Blind Pew and the black spot; about Billy Bones, and Black Dog and, above all, Captain Flint.

It has taken John Drake to give us that back story. The first in his series of Treasure Island prequels was Flint And Silver – which told how Flint became a pirate, and how he and Long John Silver met, became friends and partners in crime – and then mortal enemies.

Pieces Of Eight, the second in the series, is now available in paperback. Silver and a few of his cronies have been marooned on Flint’s ‘treasure island’. Flint himself, meanwhile, has sailed off in the Walrus to recruit a small army with which to take back the island, finish off Silver, and recover the buried treasure only he knows the location of.

It is a swashbuckling, rip-roaring tale, steeped in the sound of pirate oaths and the salt tang of the sea. During the course of 400 breathless pages, it takes in a tribe of lost American Indians; an escaped black slave; a troop of plague-bearing monkeys; a pursuing squadron of navy ships – and, dominating the whole book, Flint and Silver.

Drake’s Silver is essentially a noble man dragged down by circumstances: but in the course of this book we begin to see him changing into the scheming, ruthless pirate of Treasure Island. Flint, meanwhile, is a monster of epic proportions: a charming, handsome leader of men whose heart is as black and pitiless as coal.

A great summer read.

* Pieces Of Eight by John Drake (HarperCollins paperback, £7.99)