Beadle's Pocket Library No. 11

About this issue

Colonel Prentiss Ingraham's "Ralph Roy, the Boy Buccaneer; or, The Fugitive Yacht" presents a tale of mistaken identity and flight. The eighteen-year-old Ralph Roy, a wealthy planter's son attending Classical College, quarrels with fellow student Paul Presbury over an accusation of theft. Roy demands a duel. That evening at a masquerade ball, Roy, costumed as a Buccaneer Chief, encounters Presbury (as a Greek officer) and they duel in the garden. Roy fatally wounds his opponent, believing him to be Presbury—but discovers he has killed his closest friend, Ned Rayford, who had intended to fight Presbury himself to save Roy's life. Roy flees, meets Presbury in a formal pistol duel at dawn, and shoots him. When village constable Sandy Ross arrives to arrest Roy for Rayford's murder (witnessed by an escaped slave), Roy strikes the officer, shoots him and the slave's horse, and escapes on Ross's horse. He abandons the animal at a riverside, discovers a small boat, and takes to the water as pursuit closes in. The narrative breaks off as mysterious figures gather onshore.