Beadle's Pocket Library No. 450: 'Kidnapped Dick'

About this issue

This is issue No. 450 of a Beadle and Adams weekly publication from 1892 (dated August 24, 1892). The featured serial is "Kidnapped Dick: The Fate of the Firefly," a tale of 1781 by J. Stanley Henderson. Set in Revolutionary War-era South Carolina, the narrative centers on the schooner Firefly, a vessel operating as privateer, smuggler, and pirate. Captain Jants Petrikin commands the craft with Connecticut Yankee Malachi Slicker as clerk. The crew includes seaman Ben Ducket and enslaved worker Pomp. The men have kidnapped a young boy and await John Van Vorst, a ranger operating under British authority, who intends to purchase the child for ransom purposes outlined in a letter from Silas Warden. Van Vorst arrives and takes the boy—now renamed "Dick VanVorst" to conceal his identity—into the swamps to a hidden island settlement of free rangers. An old enslaved woman named Chloe receives the boy for care, preparing him for ranger life in the Carolina wilderness.