The Queen of the Pirate Isle Bret Harte Author
- new bookISBN: 2940016096810
MRS SMITH 7POLLY 10BEGGAR CHILD 12SCHOOL MISTRESS 12INDIAN MAIDEN 13PROUD LADY 14CHINESE JUNK … More...
MRS SMITH 7POLLY 10BEGGAR CHILD 12SCHOOL MISTRESS 12INDIAN MAIDEN 13PROUD LADY 14CHINESE JUNK 15SWIMMING FOR HIS LIFE 16A TENT 17CAPTURE OF MERCHANTMAN 18AT SUPPER 20POLLY IN THE BRANCHES 23PATSEY 25SLUMGULLION 28EACH OTHER'S HANDS 30EDGE OF CLIFF 31SLIDING DOWN HILL 32PIG TAIL ROPE 34FIREWORKS IN CAVE 37LADY MARY'S HAIR GONE 39INVISIBLE MEDICINE 42CLAD IN DEEPEST MOURNING 44BROTHER STEP-AND-FETCH-IT 48WAN LEE 54NOT ALWAYS PIRATES 56POLLY BROUGHT HOME 58ASLEEP WITH DOLL 60[Illustration]THE QUEEN OF THE PIRATE ISLE.I first knew her as the Queen of the Pirate Isle. To the best of myrecollection she had no reasonable right to that title. She was onlynine years old, inclined to plumpness and good humour, deprecatedviolence and had never been to sea. Need it be added that she did_not_ live in an island and that her name was Polly.[Illustration][Illustration]Perhaps I ought to explain that she had already known otherexperiences of a purely imaginative character. Part of her existencehad been passed as a Beggar Child--solely indicated by a shawltightly folded round her shoulders and chills,--as a Schoolmistress,unnecessarily severe; as a Preacher, singularly personal in hisremarks, and once, after reading one of Cooper's novels, as anIndian Maiden. This was, I believe, the only instance when she hadborrowed from another's fiction. Most of the characters that sheassumed for days and sometimes weeks at a time were purely originalin conception; some so much so as to be vague to the generalunderstanding. I remember that her personation of a certain Mrs.Smith, whose individuality was supposed to be sufficientlyrepresented by a sun-bonnet worn wrong side before and a weeklyaddition to her family, was never perfectly appreciated by her owncircle although she lived the character for a month. Anothercreation known as The Proud Lady--a being whose excessive andunreasonable haughtiness was so pronounced as to give her featuresthe expression of extreme nausea, caused her mother so much alarmthat it had to be abandoned. This was easily effected. The ProudLady was understood to have died. Indeed, most of Polly'simpersonations were got rid of in this way, although it by no meansprevented their subsequent reappearance. I thought Mrs. Smith wasdead, remonstrated her mother at the posthumous appearance of thatlady with a new infant. She was buried alive and kem to! saidPolly with a melancholy air. Fortunately, the representation of aresuscitated person required such extraordinary acting, and was,through some uncertainty of conception, so closely allied in facialexpression to the Proud Lady, that Mrs. Smith was resuscitated onlyfor a day.[Illustration][Illustration]The origin of the title of the Queen of the Pirate Isle, may bebriefly stated as follows:--An hour after luncheon, one day, Polly, Hickory Hunt, her cousin,and Wan Lee, a Chinese page, were crossing the nursery floor in aChinese junk. The sea was calm and the sky cloudless. Any change inthe weather was as unexpected as it is in books. Suddenly a WestIndian Hurricane, purely local in character and unfelt anywhereelse, struck Master Hickory and threw him overboard, whence, wildlyswimming for his life and carrying Polly on his back, he eventuallyreached a Desert Island in the closet. Here the rescued party put upa tent made of a table cloth providentially snatched from the ragingbillows, and from two o'clock until four, passed six weeks on theisland supported only by a piece of candle, a box of matches, andtwo peppermint lozenges. It was at this time that it becamenecessary to account for Polly's existence among them, and this wasonly effected by an alarming sacrifice of their morality; Hickoryand Wan Lee instantly became _Pirates_, and at once elected Polly astheir Queen. The royal duties, which seemed to be purely maternal,consisted in putting the Pirates to bed after a day of rapine andbloodshed, and in feeding them with liquorice water through a quillin a small bottle. Digital Content>E-books>Classics>Coll Classics>Coll Classics, SAP Digital >16<
