The Spanish Main

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31380, 27 May 1967, Page 4

The Spanish Main

Yard-Arm for a Gallows. By John E. Edwards. Dent. Illustrations by B. S. Biro. 176 pp. Though the dust-cover notice gives no bint of It, this could be an adventure story for boys. Adults might find it too unsophisticated, and they could be irked by the author’s unrealistic habit of writing background material into the dialogue of persons who have no need to parade facts they both know well. This is a pity, because the author, who has had naval experience, has set his story imaginatively in the Caribbean and on the South American coast in the days of treasure-filled Spanish galleons harried by British men-o’-war, buccaneers and pirates. But perhaps the adult reader should resist the temptation to riddle this story with grape-shot and, instead, con-

cede it a atroogly comic elament

It concerns the adventures of a boy of 17 (Bab Walton) and a younger but vary serious Maroon Indian (Zacharias) who talk and act like grown men in most circumstances, however trying they may be. Foils for these two precocious heroes are the ungrammatical, outspoken Calico Fife, captain of the sloop Flamingo, and MM friend Shanty Sawkins, ex-naval gunners’ mate whose King’s English is as curious as Calico's. Shanty had escaped from prison and hanging after being convicted of disobeying British Navy orders in order to save shipwrecked lives (Bab's of course); and since then, as master of the queer high-pooped ship Black Joke, his passion has been to rehabilitate himself with the navy by means of some daring exploit against the Spaniards. With the assistance of the boys, Calico aodShaaty mid

an **impregnable” Spanish coastal town, rescue a Maroon chief from slavery, discover hidden treasure, make a fire ship of the Black Joke, lose the treasure (intended as a peace offering to the British Sovereign), and finish on a British naval yard-arm with ropes round their necks. They are rescued. Guess by whom—by Rab, of course. The Biro drawings are good.