Beadle's Dime Library No. 18

"The Queen of the Isle," serialized adventure by Ned Buntline

This opening chapter of Buntline's serial romance centers on a birthday festival in Cuba. At the Marquis de Regla's palace in Matanzas, the marquis's daughter Maraquita—eighteen, beautiful, described as an intellectual and soulful—attracts Lieutenant Allen of the American schooner Alligator. The marquis introduces his mysterious associate Don Eduardo Quiestra, a tall, wealthy man of unknown origin with notable influence. Quiestra, intrigued by Allen's interest in Maraquita, subtly extracts the lieutenant's confession of love. Allen reveals the affection is reciprocated but secretly. Later chapters introduce Surgeon O'Shaughnessy of the Alligator—a corpulent, Irish-accented American dentist extracting teeth through comedic violence—and provide nautical details of American and Mexican vessels in Havana harbor, establishing a tale of romantic entanglement amid American-Spanish colonial tension.