The Cretan Rover

# Museum Catalog Note

The Cretan Rover; or, the Turk, a Master of His Weapon by Col. Prentiss Ingraham, serialized in this 1897 dime novel, concerns a tragedy set in Crete and Constantinople. The narrative opens with El Estin, a gray-haired Cretan, confronting Al Sirat, a Turkish officer, in ancient ruins overlooking the sea. Years earlier, Al Sirat stole Alfarida, the woman El Estin loved, leaving him struck down. During their rematch, Al Sirat mortally wounds El Estin. A supernatural intervention—a white-mantled woman's specter—frightens the Turk away. The second section shifts to Constantinople, where a suicidal Englishman contemplates drowning himself in the Bosphorus. He instead rescues a mysterious man attacked by the sultan's secret soldiers, escaping by boat into unknown circumstances.