Beadle's Dime Library No. 364

# Museum Catalog Note

This October 1885 issue of a Beadle & Adams dime novel contains the opening chapters of two serialized stories. "The Queen of the Coast" by Col. Prentiss Ingraham begins with naval officer Noel Brandon's disgraced return to his Maine hometown after being discharged and stripped of rank for killing a superior officer. He reunites with a accomplished young woman he once saved, though she rebuffs his romantic gesture. Brandon is carrying substantial winnings from gambling and cargo from foreign lands.

The parallel serial, "The Sea Fugitive," reveals a darker thread: a grizzled man named Darke Darrell, revealed as Brandon's childhood enemy presumed dead for twelve years, has tracked him to the Kennebec River valley with criminal intent. Darrell returns not repentant but bent on revenge and robbery. He enlists accomplices—the men Jenks and Toddy Tom—to waylay Brandon on the river road and steal his gold and baggage, planning to finance a ship and fortune at sea.