The Great Secret - Not Great, Not a Secret

First, I wanna complain about the deceptive advertising.


No, I'm not mad about Miss Not-Appearing-in-this-Story on the cover.  But since "The Great Secret" is also on the novella's front, and the back consists solely of an excerpt from the story, you might expect that like Under the Black Ensign you're in for a good sixty pages or so of... well, a great secret of some sort.  But nope!  Checking the inside flaps of the book jacket will reveal that the paperback "also includes the science fiction stories 'Space Can,' 'The Beast' and 'The Slaver,'" so the work on the cover is only part of the collection.  And then if you check the table of contents you'll see that said work is only fifteen pages long.  And then if you flip through a few pages, you'll learn that "The Great Secret" is really only thirteen pages long because two of the pages included in the table of contents' count are blank or merely repeat the title.

So you can imagine how "great" this secret can be if it takes just over a dozen pages to talk about it.  And then you actually read the story and learn the disappointing truth.

Sweeping clouds shadowed the tawny plain, and far off in the east the plumes of night spread gently, mournfully, burying the corpse of the Livian day.  Fanner Marston, a tattered speck upon a ridge, looked eastward, looked to the glory he sought and beheld it.

Got here a passage rich in words and poor in sense.  "Burying the corpse" of the day, fine, but comparing nightfall to "plumes" just doesn't work - plumes are things like geysers (or feathers), and night doesn't come in spurts of darkness (or feathers?).  If someone is looking to see something and immediately beholds it, you might as well just say they beheld it to begin with.  Also, the name Fanner is a bit on the distractingly silly side, and I'd also like to point out that we're never told the proper name for this world, only its descriptor.  Might be the planet Livi, Livia, Liv, who knows, who cares.

Throat and tongue swollen with thirst, green eyes blazing now with new ecstasy, he knew he had it. He would gain it, would realize that heady height upon which he had elected to stand. Before him lay the Great Secret! The Secret which had made a dead race rule the Universe!

But which wasn't great enough to keep them alive, evidently.

And that Secret would be his, Fanner Marston's, and Fanner Marston would be the ruler, the new ruler, the arbiter of destiny for all the Universe!

Get used to that sentence, variations of it are repeated over and over the next dozen pages.  It's either representative of the character's obsession with attaining ultimate cosmic power, or a sign that the author was padding out the story, such as it is, into something long enough to submit to a magazine.  You be the judge.

So this Fanner guy has spent weeks crossing broken plains scorched by binary suns and scaling this world's blue mountains, but now he's reached his destination: "Parva, dead, beautiful city of the ancients, city of the blessed, city of knowledge and power."  Yes, Fanner's eyes are dull and his lips are cracked from thirst, and his canteens are empty.  Yes, his "monocycle" is broken along with all the other vehicles in his caravan, and twenty miles of rough terrain lie between him and his destination.  And yes, all of Fanner's forty companions have died from disease, thirst or infighting - though this really just saves him the trouble of killing them himself so they won't steal the Great Secret from him.  But none of it matters, his destination is in sight and soon its power will be his.

He had won.  They had told him that he could not; the legends said it was not possible for any mortal man to win.  But the spell of the ancients was broken, their books were open, their riches lay for the taking.  Parva was there!  Parva was his!

We can't examine this story's premise too closely.

Liv-whatever is another planet, so Fanner and his dead crew had to travel there by spaceship.  Unless said spaceship was completely windowless and had no visual sensors, they had to look down from orbit and pick a landing spot.  So they could have held their horses, searched for and found Parva from above, and landed right on its doorstep, but instead they decided to put down several mountain ranges and deserts away from their destination.  Unless that "plumes of night" bit wasn't a botched metaphor and there's heavy atmospheric interference in this area, but that wouldn't jive with the 'scorching desert' setting given to us.

Then there's just a bunch of unanswered questions, like who "they" are in the above 'I'll show them, I'll show them all!' rant, and what exactly Fanner "won" to find Parva's location.  Or how Parva was lost when its people once ruled the universe.  Or how a people who once ruled the universe could keep a Great Secret contained to a single location.

I guess this is a sci-fi take on the old idea of a dauntless explorer uncovering the secrets of a lost city in a jungle or desert somewhere, except when you add the technology to make that story sci-fi, it gets a lot harder to justify such a premise.

Anyway, Fanner cackles unpleasantly and begins the final stretch of his journey, ignoring his thirst and the sharp rocks he treads upon, buoyed by thoughts of what he'll do with that Great Secret.

Fanner Marston would bring in a new era, a day when spaceships no longer had to land in seas to save themselves from being shattered,

My remark about their spaceships not having any way of looking at the ground seems less jokey now.

when men would be hampered no longer in combating the atmospheres of many now uninhabitable planets.

Huh.  So what, pollution is ruining our offworld colonies?  Or are we falling prey to galactic climate change?  And if you can create a sealed, livable environment for a spaceship, why is that an insurmountable problem?

The wealth of the Universe would be his for the taking, the entire race of mankind would bow to his command like vassals.  For there, glittering in the sunset, was Parva - Parva, the city of the Great Secret.

Must be a hell of a secret, if it covers everything from rocket science to climatology to Making Friends and Influencing People.  'cause it's not like the first two alone would make all of humanity bow before you, we didn't choose Robert Goddard to be our eternal ruler or anything just because he made the first liquid-fueled rocket.

As Fanner stumbles along, we get a sparse page of exposition about his backstory - he started out a "slavey" in a pirate camp, then became a small-time thief in the Universe's big cities, until he picked up the legend of Parva from somewhere and grew convinced he would be the one to find it.

There, men said, lay the most advanced science of the Universe, sealed up in a strangely constructed city, covered with the dust of eons.

"Strangely constructed" is right - there's an illustration in my version, and Parva's main building looks like a combination tombstone and fire hydrant, with two arms jutting out from either side supporting what look to be several giant pancakes.

It had been seen from afar by this one; it had been reported by a man gone mad with thirst; it had crept down the centuries in the literature of space.

So presumably Liv-whatever is inhabited.  And people have spotted Parva before.  But nobody else has managed to fly over and take a peek at its Great Secret yet.  Huh.

One and all agreed that Parva and Parva alone contained the sum total of knowledge gathered by that vanished race, one which had been so far advanced that ethereal communication with the planets had been possible,

Radio?

that its spaceships could land on ground.

Parachutes, landing gear and runways?

That civilization had used atomic power,

Nuclear fission?

not radioactive fuel.

Oh.  Fusion, then.  Yeah, I guess that's a big deal.

Its men had been able to clothe themselves against the rigors of the many uninhabitable planets.

Space suits?

A lot of these 'wonders of the ancients' sound a lot like things a spacefaring civilization would have to come up with to get into space in the first place.

And then Parva alone remained of all that great culture and Parva itself had died.  But within it there must be the Great Secret.

And before you ask, no, the big twist isn't that Parva is someplace on Earth and Fanner's contemporaries have forgotten their heritage, Earth is mentioned on the next page.

Of the Great Secret, men understood very little save that which had been expressed in a short formula.  But with that formula a man might master all.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start.

It's such a potent formula, such a Great Secret, that Fanner knows that all he has to do is stagger his way into Parva and he'll be fine.  He's dying of thirst and out in the middle of nowhere with no way of traveling but a pair of battered boots, but no worries, the Great Secret will fix that.  Yeah, that formula will certainly let him nip all the way back to Earth in time for his victory parade.

And he could nearly taste the liquors - fantastically expensive and satisfying - which he would drink, and feel the warm flesh of the women who would love him, would love the master of the Universe.  And he would tell men to go hither and thither; he would move great armies and fleets, he would cause vast conquests, and kings would bow before his brilliance and his might.  For all of eternity he would be remembered.  The Great Secret would be his.

And so on.  For four pages Fanner struggles forward, gashing himself on rocks as he marches through the night, then roasting under the double suns after dawn, all while holding on to his vision of "Women, liquor, power!"  He passes out for a short time, then resorts to crawling, moving as quickly as he can to reach his destination before the local windstorms kick up and start hurling stones the size of baseballs.  Nice to know America's favorite pre-football pastime survives to this stupid future.

Finally, he reaches the city, and Fanner is initially concerned when what looked like a silver river from a distance turns out to be the rim of a giant glass dome over the Parva... which was not included in the illustration I mentioned earlier, oddly enough.  Guess it was so clear as to be invisible.  He finds and opens a portal in the dome to enter the legendary city, and discovers the place refreshingly cool thanks to some artistry of the ancients, but all its pools and waterways are long since empty.  Which sucks, but whatever, right?  Surely that formula, that Great Secret, can make water gush from a stone like Poseidon's trident!

Fanner walks along a street of silver as he searches for the mythic golden plaque... I mean, it could be worse, this could be El Space Dorado and the city itself could be made of gold or something.  He finally reaches it in a room that is undoubtedly awe-inspiring and spectacular to behold, the architectural embodiment of all the great accomplishments of this vanished people, though all we're told about it is that you go through four arches to enter it, the chains holding up the plaque are also gold, and the wall is smooth and white. 

Now, it just so happens that Fanner has a dictionary to translate the ancients' language, and don't even ask.  Just don't.

He sank to the floor, gazing at the inscription in ecstasy.  His dreams flooded back upon him, revitalizing him.  He was not a broken and torn wretch cowering there, nearly dead with thirst and exhaustion, he was Fanner Marston at whose beck would come all those things for which he craved.

And then he realizes he forgot his reading glasses, noooooo!

I think I'd like that twist more than what we're given.  Fanner is so intent on his work that he translates the plaque without really reading the words until he's finished.  Then he finally sits back and takes them in... and rereads them... and rereads them once more.

The Great Secret that had made this civilization great...

If thou, O Man, would rule the worlds, the All,

First learn thou, the folly of matter and the material lusts.

What a... what a tweest, I guess.

First off, it's not a formula, though I suppose some things get corrupted when they pass into legend.  And this sort of allegedly-profound philosophical axiom would hardly help a culture become rulers of the universe - though maybe that was another inaccurate part of the legend, or else the ancients cheerfully ignored their own purported virtues as they carved out a great empire, which we've seen plenty of times in our own history.

And what the hell does "the folly of matter" mean?  Matter is, like, stuff.  You can say it's folly to pursue material pleasures at the cost of virtue or whatever, but saying that rocks and trees and Mark Zuckerberg are inherently silly is a tad nonsensical.  Especially if you go on to build advanced spaceships and spacesuits and climate-proof domes to demonstrate your mastery of this folly.

Another question is why this qualifies as a "secret."  Alright, maybe this nugget of wisdom is too profound for most cultures to come up with, but why would you keep it a secret?  If material lusts and foolish matter keep people from realizing their potential, you'd probably want to spread the word, evangelize, introduce others to your superior philosophy.  You'd make this wisdom so widely-available and well-known that it could never be forgotten.  At the very least you'd put it on bumper stickers.

Though maybe this goes along with the intense irony of L. Ron Hubbard delivering this particular anti-materialistic aesop.  Maybe the ancient Pavrans had to invest thousands of dollars and go through rigorous spiritual tests before they were deemed ready to receive the Great Secret about the folly of material lusts.

But that's the story - a Twilight Zone twist ending preceded by twelve pages of padding, a story that would work better if it was some ancient explorer searching for the 'treasure' of Iram of the Pillars or something.  Like I said, it doesn't work so well when you bring space travel into it, or when you hype the Great Secret as something that would allow you to master the galaxy with improved spaceships and spacesuits.  But given all the L. Ron Hubbard stories already covered on this blog, we shouldn't be surprised that the author chose the wrong tool for the job.

Non-Update Update and an Interesting Link

Mission Spork will be taking the rest of the week off to celebrate an act of heartwarming charity that was betrayed a thousand times over, and then I'll have to decide what to do next.  I still have a few more Hubbard "classic" pulp stories to consider, so we may explore his attempts at a spy thriller (or rather early attempt) and whatever "If I Were You" is.  From the cover art it looks set in a circus, and I'm not sure how to classify such a story.

A question looms over all this like an erupting volcano: whither Dianetics?  Thus far I've been skirting the topic of Scientology, or maybe I should say mocking it when I recognize its influence on Hubbard's fiction (or vice versa) rather than tackling it directly.  Doing so would seem to be the logical next step, but on the other hand, I'm not sure how I could "spork" it since it's not really literature.  It'd be like critiquing a self-help book, or grading some undergrad's half-assed attempt at a thesis.

Additionally - well, it's been done.  Tony Ortega and Vance Woodward have completed a 25-part series, Blogging Dianetics, and you can probably guess what they wrote about during it.  From what I've read, it seems pretty informative and hits Dianetics' highlights (who knew constipation during pregnancy could seed a developing mind with negative thoughts?) while also providing a good perspective on all the crazy, since Mr. Woodward is an ex-Scientologist turned lawyer and writer.  I'm not sure what I could add.

But maybe something will occur to me when I have the time to go through the whole series in-depth.  At any rate, busy couple of days, then back to pondering the next step, and then I should have something next week.  Until then, enjoy the annual turkey genocide.

And Yet I'm Still Disappointed

So ends Under the Black Ensign.  Though I guess it would be Under the Union Jack if there was another chapter added to it, right?

It wasn't bad, or at least bad like Hubbard's other works were.  Its flaws aren't rooted in the author's psychological issues or ignorance, and the tale isn't trying to be something it isn't.  There's no fundamental problem that causes the story to collapse or alienates the reader.  But it's not very good, either.

The characters are all flat, from the square-jawed and rugged Bristol to the flabby and cowardly governor to Bryce the flamboyant pirate.  Lady Jane doesn't do anything but look pretty, fall for the hero, and get kidnapped - alright, I guess pulling a plot contrivance out of her purse for the grand finale might count for something, but other than that she serves little purpose in the story.  Nobody undergoes any real character development, and after spending a few chapters railing against the injustices of the colonial system, Bristol unhesitatingly accepts a job offer by the people whose abuses drove him to piracy in the first place.

This might be more forgivable if the rest of the story made up for these deficiencies, but nope.  For what is supposed to be a swashbuckling adventure, surprisingly little buckles were swashed.  I think the longest fight is the half-page duel between Bristol and Ricardo back in Chapter Three, and the action scenes are given pretty sparse descriptions: "The guy slashed his sword.  A pistol thundered.  Another guy fell down."  I'm not asking that when two characters come to blows the author spend several pages describing every thrust and parry, but it'd be nice if he showed some interest when his characters are placed in mortal danger.

And if you're looking for escapism, to lose yourself in a pirate fantasy, this story doesn't does a good job of telling you how it feels to be a seadog.  When Bristol's up in the Terror's rigging at the start of the book, the author describes what the main character can see from there and that the Caribbean is nice and blue that morning.  Nothing about the cool breeze brushing past Bristol's ears, the creaks and groans of the tower of rope and timber he's settled upon, the teetering sway the mast as the vessel rolls and climbs and slides over the waves.  We get no sense of the daily routine that comes when serving at sea, what it's like to lead a band of outlaws, how you justify killing other people to take their stuff, what's it like to walk back into civilization after spending weeks living outside the law.

It almost reads like a summary of someone else's pirate story.  Which is a weird thing to say on a blog that summarizes and critiques other people's writing, I'll admit.

So if stuff like Mission Earth and Ole Doc Methuselah failed because their foundations were rotten, this story is underwhelming because the author made a rather uninspired hovel out of the timber and nails provided.  It's just not very exciting or interesting, a tale that meets the basic requirements of storytelling but doesn't try to do more.  It's hard to see why churning out something like this gave Hubbard a reputation as a master storyteller, or why stuff like Under the Black Ensign constituted a golden age of popular literature.

Maybe the silver age was really underwhelming.

There's one thing Under the Black Ensign does do well - you will pick up some nautical terminology.  From mizzentops to marlinespikes to foretops to pieces of seven, this story will send you flipping forward to the book's glossary with an annoyed sigh as you try to figure out what the hell the author is talking about.  And I have to say, it's a little strange to read something in which Hubbard displays an understanding of his subject matter.  Guy should've stuck with pirate stories instead of trying to do sci-fi, that's for sure.

Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 8 - The Last Hurrah of Pirate Captain Bristol

A busy fourteen pages before we wrap up the story.

Bristol enters Nevis' harbor aboard the Terror, towing the Falcon, so that unless someone looks close enough to notice the not-whiteness of its crew, people should mistake him for a victorious British ship with a captured pirate vessel.  It helps that it's foggy and early enough that nobody has to fly the "morning colors" or announce themselves, it's the time of day that you just sail into port all quiet and inconspicuous.  I guess that's a thing?  It would be a suspiciously convenient protocol to make up, this "we just woke up and aren't paying close attention" hour.

The pirates make it all the way next to the anchored man-o'-war before the sun burns off the fog, someone gets a good look at the Terror's crew and shouts the alarm.  That Black Ensign goes up, broadsides are exchanged, and Bristol soon realizes that Ewell deceived him - there are enough men at Charlestown to operate Bryce's captured vessel after all.  If only our hero had waterboarded the lieutenant, then he would've gotten more reliable intelligence.

Now, here's the trouble with constantly reminding us of the ethnicity of Bristol's sailors.

Bristol ran his ship in close to her. His port guns were ready to let drive. His black gunners held their matches in steady hands, blowing on the hemp to keep the fire going.

"Fire!" cried Bristol.

Three rows of black snouts leaped out of sight, replaced instantly by a slashing horizontal column of smoke.

It reads like Bristol's crew just let out an almighty sneeze at the enemy.

Anyway, boats shoot at each other and the man-o'-war limps away, not to run, but to block Bristol's exit from the harbor.  And it's at this point that our hero realizes that he may be boned - he's outnumbered and now trapped in a hostile port.  His only hope is to rush Charlestown's palace and try to seize the governor, thereby winning the match and forcing the other team to concede.  But of course there's too many bad guys, such a feat would be impossible, etc.

Without nary a "it must be chanced," Bristol gives his men the order to beach the Terror and storm the harbor.  He won't be doing this unopposed, however, there are hostiles preparing barricades and readying themselves to resist him.  And oddly enough,

Bristol saw with surprise that most of these men were black.  Was it possible that the planters had sent forth their slaves to do their fighting for them?  Did Sir Charles think the English regulars too good to risk their necks?  Disgust welled up in Bristol - disgust for a feudal system that had come down from the medieval days, when men were mere beasts of burden.

He's not racist, guys.  Though this does make the ensuing brief paragraph of combat a bit confusing, as the narrator has to distinguish between "The blacks" diving into the water after Bristol and the "black from shore" he stabs while rushing into Charlestown.

With that minor speedbump overcome, Bristol runs towards a building which he "took it to be an arsenal," which means it's actually something else.  Swords are swung, musket balls are fired, and the reader is left to do the heavy lifting for this exciting pirate action scene.  The important thing is that Bristol hears someone calling to him and discovers Bryce beating on a barred door - he's not in an arsenal, but the prison!

Bristol gets some keys to release Bryce, who of course is in fighting shape after enduring days of imprisonment by the cruel British.  Even better, there's three hundred other prisoners caged with him, who are all equally willing and able to fight.  And the good luck continues when the heroes find crates of sabers confiscated from the Spanish, all stored conveniently in the colony's prison.  Sure is a good thing that Bristol inexplicably abandoned his plan to grab the governor and went for a gated building he could "hold out" in, huh?

So the British batter into the arsenal that Bristol's pirates have seized, only to just as quickly be routed by the feeble and malnourished prisoners swinging greasy swords just out of their packaging.  Bristol has everyone follow him up the hill to the palace, and nobody reacts when a cannon mounted over the place's gates "carved a straight line" through the mob of pirates.  They've got good morale, I'll give them that.

Bristol has a pair of his "blacks" throw him onto the wall next to the gun crew, heralding a rain of buccaneers that seizes the fortifications.  The cannon is predictably captured and spun around to blast open the palace gates, and... huh, it doesn't look like there's any real defenders besides that gun crew and a "crew at the gate."  No snipers firing from the palace itself, no bodyguards putting up a barricade in the entrance hall.  Hmm.

With such paltry resistance, Bristol only takes Bryce "and a few of the blacks" with him to confront the book's villain.  Sir Charles Stukely is astonishingly still sitting at his desk, dressed in a fancy blue coat.  When Bristol wittily asks why the governor didn't invite him to the wedding, Stukely gulps and comes close to correcting this oversight before realizing that he's being messed with.  And I have to say, when the bad guy is this pathetic, the protagonist starts to feel less like a hero and more like a bully.

Yeah, it's supposed to be karma or whatever when Bristol declares his intent to give the governor a hundred lashes of the cat-o'-nine-tails, making the other man shriek "But it's death!" and then wail that he'll do anything Bristol demands after the first strike - even though Sir Charles is so fat that "the lash could not have hurt him."  Well, I'm inferring this since the narration doesn't mention Bristol purposefully swinging gently when the thing "cracked down upon the cringing Sir Charles."  Point is, it may be karmic, but it doesn't feel heroic.  Particularly when the author spends such efforts making Bristol a noble pirate in contrast with the "civilized" people he fights against.

No sooner does Sir Charles fold like a bag of pudding than a side door opens to admit Lady Jane Campbell, wearing a billowing white satin gown.  She recognizes and rushes at Bristol, and it's weird, but they don't actually hug.  There's evidence that they hugged, when the orchids of her corsage are crushed, except the sequences goes as follows: she runs at him and cries out his name, Bristol "held her away from him," and then he notices the crushed flowers.  See, no contact.  Or maybe it was too racy to explicitly describe a hug between a man and a woman in 1936.

Let's spend the last two and a half pages talking and writing.  Lady Jane declares that Bristol needs to see some papers she has, ones she used her influence as lady-in-waiting to the Queen of England to send for, and which she was trying to pick up at Charlotte Amalie before getting kidnapped.  They're a letter from King Charles II issuing a royal decree pardoning Captain Thomas Bristol and making him a Commodore in the Royal Navy.  Neat.

Bristol takes a moment to digest this, then forces Sir Charles to write up a letter to His Majesty explaining how he (Sir Charles) hereby resigns his position as governor of Nevis in favor of a restorative holiday to Jamaica, and is giving the new Commodore Bristol temporary control of the island.  Bristol also promises to give Bryce a privateering commission to work against the Spanish in the Pacific, and then he figures that if Lady Jane came to Nevis to marry its Lord High Governor, maybe she still feels up to it.  She agrees, Bristol laughs, and then orders Bryce to "Send those pirates of yours and my crew into the barracks to clean themselves up.  And spread the news through the town and the fort, and to the waiting man-o'-war, that the Lord High Governor invites them all to his wedding."

And that's the end of the story.  Captain Bristol has gone from a condemned sailor to a pirate to a military governor in charge of the very men he just finished fighting against.  Bryce's crimes have been forgiven so long as he promises to kill the right people from now on.  And a bunch of pirates, sailors and townspeople who had recently been doing their best to murder each other are now expected to wash up and behave themselves at a wedding.  I hope they can put out the fires and clean up the bodies before the ceremony, it's awfully unlucky for a bride to trip on a corpse on her way up the aisle.

I guess like how pulps are good literature only if you don't think about them too much, this is a happy ending if you don't try to figure out how everyone's expected to deal with each other the next day.


Back to Part 7

Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 7 - Dishonorable British Sailors

There's a lot of ways to defuse any dramatic tension that your story might be generating.  A couple of chapters ago L. Ron Hubbard showed us how just by naming a chapter "Bristol Finds a Ship" you can neutralize any excitement caused by marooning a character, and in this chapter, "Black Ensign Against Red and White," you can similarly take all the thrills out of a naval confrontation by explaining in the third paragraph how "The Falcon was more than a match for the man-o'-war."  Truly, he was a literary pioneer.

So Bristol's sailing to Nevis, and going slow 'cause it's against the wind, and then there's this English man-o'-war in his way.  He knows he can defeat it easily (see above), he just doesn't see the point of fighting - there's nothing worth taking from the warship, and he'd rather get on to Nevis and try to smuggle Lady Jane out of Charlestown with a minimum of fuss.  Our hero is even willing to forgo teaching Sir Charles "a lesson" if it means getting his second officer back.  Though if Bristol has any deeper motivations for recovering "Jim," they aren't shared with the reader.

Anyway, this ship is in the way, it's sending up the signal flags for "come alongside," and Bristol recognizes it as the Terror - a ship last seen under the command of the pirate Captain Bryce, if you'll remember.  So Bristol decides to have a little chat with the enemy to gather some intelligence.  He's no fool, though, he has his "black gunners" readying weapons on the deck and the "black gun captains" standing by with torches to fire a broadside.  And Hubbard, it's been established that Bristol's crew is African.  You don't have to remind us every single time you refer to them.

When the two boats are close enough to yell at each other, good ole Lt. Ewell demands Bristol's surrender, and says that Bryce is being held prisoner at Charlestown.  This upsets Bristol, not so much because his rescuer now needs rescue himself, but because it means there will probably be additional ships to fight at Nevis.  He ignores Ewell's promise of clemency and says he'll give the other ship ten minutes to back off before he fires the broadsides.

But then, Captain Mannville makes a dramatic gesture, and the Terror's gun crews put matches to their weapons.  Wow, the 'civilized' navy guys are more dishonorable than the 'savage' pirates, etc.  Bristol's able to give his own men the order to fire before the Terror's cannons discharge, and then there's a brief action scene.

The man-o'-war's broadside was deafening.  A cloud of bitter smoke shot out, covering up the Falcon.  Iron smashed into the pirate's hull.  Splinters geysered, as deadly as bullets.

The Falcon's own guns exploded as one.  The rail was high and the hail of twenty-eight-pound shot ripped great holes in the man-o'-war's rigging, made havoc of the decks.  Bristol saw his helmsmen go down and snatched at the spinning spokes.  The Falcon, shrouded in the greasy powder fog, lunged for the Britisher's sail.

Wait, Bristol's helmsman went down during his ship's broadside, not during the Terror's attack?

To make a short story shorter, Bristol sends his borders over, then follows and runs along the Terror's rail "like a tightrope walker," slashing with his rapier all the way.  And there's another way to neuter tension, have your hero do something ridiculous like this.  Bristol dodges Mannville's pistols, menaces the captain, and convinces him to surrender.  The score: eight dead pirates, ten dead Britons.

Bristol goes back to trying to wring information out of his opponents, and Ewell explains that Bryce was ambushed at Martinico a few weeks ago by a full squadron of British vessels, and is now awaiting execution.  When he badmouths the pirate, Bristol reminds him

"Watch your tongue!" said Bristol curtly.  "Those blacks know you fired out of turn.  They'd like nothing better than to string you up by your thumbs and beat you with that cat-o'-nine over there."

Ewell sagged, incredulous.  "But... but you wouldn't!  You're not a barbarian, you're a gentleman!  What of the white prestige!"

In addition to inventing new ways to make an adventure story as excitement-free as possible, Hubbard wrote a whole book on subtlety.  It was three feet wide, weighed seventy pounds, and had glow-in-the-dark ink.

His patience wearing thin, Bristol demands specifics about Charlestown's defenses, and learns that there's only one man-o'-war anchored there that's operational - Bryce's "ships" (I guess he had more than the one he took the Terror with hidden away somewhere) can't be manned because they're short on sailors.  While admitting this, Ewell glances at both Captain Mannville and a nearby cat-o'-nine tails, thus implying that the bad guys' pointless brutality is, as usual for a Hubbard story, undermining their ability to oppose the good guys.  But Ewell rallies and boasts that the settlement is defended by a battery of big thousand-pound cannons that our hero will surely be unable to defeat.

"Ah, well," said Bristol, "it must be chanced.  Amara!  Get these prisoners under the hatch."

C'mon, man, at least pretend that there's a chance you'll lose.  But that might generate excitement over what could happen next chapter, and we can't have that, can we? 


Back to Chapter 6

Forward to Chapter 8

Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 6 - Stingy Danish Merchants

Well, I suppose last chapter had enough intense piracy action to last us a good while.  So let's hit the fast-forward button and recap Captain Bristol's exciting adventures on the Caribbean.

The Spanish ship, rechristened the Falcon, had earned herself a reputation.  She was a fleet ghost across the trade lanes, to be feared and shunned - not because of excessive brutality, but because of the terrible calmness with which her attacks were planned and carried to completion.

Yeeaaah.  At least Hubbard's not trying to convince us that Bristol is some sort of tactical genius.  And I guess a bunch of chill pirates who casually capture your boat would stand out from the excitement of normal outlaw attacks.

Anyway, now it's July, and if we knew what time of year it was in Chapter 1 this would mean something.  The Falcon is towing a French ship that dropped its flag after the first broadside, and I'd say that this could be an early reference to the stereotype of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," except this story was published a few years before World War II, so there's probably no malice behind the French ship's quick surrender.

Bristol's still sore about the capture, though, since all the French vessel had in its cargo hold was "cocoa, cotton and indigo."  You know, some trade goods and luxuries that inspired the great seafaring empires to establish their off-shore colonies in the first place.  What possible value could those have?

They're headed towards the port city of Charlotte Amalie, a Danish holding... wait, Denmark was in the Caribbean?  Dammit, I hate it when I have to admit that I learned something from a Hubbard story.  A bunch of "bumboats" sail up to the approaching unscrupulous sailors, and the fruit-selling "blacks" on them are surprised that "the rail should be lined by men of their own race," especially dark-skinned fellows whose stylish bandannas and shiny belt buckles mark them as freemen.  Meanwhile on deck, it's up to "Jim" to explain that Bristol should sell their captured cargo to the Danes, "and though they won't give you a twentieth the value, it's better than nothing."  Miserable Danish misers.

Oh, and Lady Jane wants to go to shore for a bit, partly to stretch her legs after an indeterminate time at sea, and partly because... well, she wants to go shopping.  Lady pirates are still ladies, am I right, fellas?  Bristol only agrees if she takes along some "husky lads" and makes sure her powder is dry, and off she goes, eyes a-sparkling and bags clinking with gold she's been hoarding "for just a spree."

Or in other words, we're in a standard adventure story and the only female character has just wandered off-screen, out from under the protagonist's supervision.  

Two local men including a cargo broker named Jersen come up to haggle over Bristol's haul, and the process has two awkward moments - when Bristol nonchalantly gestures at all the cutlasses his men are carrying when discussing his confidence that he'll get a fair deal, and when Jersen makes the mistake of suggesting that Bristol have his slaves transfer the cargo.

Bristol looked surprised.  "My slaves?"

"Why... why, yes," the Dane replied, certain that he had somehow made an error, but not quite certain just what error it had been.  "These men about your deck."

"You mean my crew," replied Bristol, an undercurrent of anger in his voice.  "These men are free men, not slaves.  I don't happen to be of your stamp, gentlemen.  When I take lives I use a rapier, not the whipping post and starvation, and yet I am a pirate, while you and your brothers are supposed to be civilized beings."

Yeah, yeah, and the Indians were "savages" when it was the United States that was conquering them, and the people of Blito-P3 consider the Voltarians "aliens" when it's they who have the bizarre and nonsensical society.

Bristol explains that his "men" - finally - are serving under him voluntarily, and once they get bored of piracy will be free to go back to Africa "with money enough to buy and sell their rulers."  Jersen gets to gape that Bristol considers them as his equals, Bristol gets to quip that he does so "more than a naval captain consider his men as equals," and Hubbard's not racist, see?  Right there in the story.  Just ignore how often the narration refers to someone as "the black" while leaving off "man" or "person," thus defining a character solely by their race, and only if that race happens to have a lot of melanin.

As evening nears, the cargo gets transferred off the captured French ship, and Bristol realizes that "Jim" is still missing.  Interestingly, when he asks his quartermaster, the man replies that he has not seen "him," and Amara only refers to the missing officer as "Mister Campbell."   So I guess Bristol's the only one who knows that Jim is a crossdresser after all?  Or maybe it's an open secret and everyone else is playing along.  The illustrations that came with my edition give Lady Jane a stylish bobbed haircut and friggin' lipstick, so I don't see how she expects to fool anyone.

Anyway, Bristol and Amara and some others head ashore as a search party, and march along the shadowy, lantern-lit streets, Bristol marching at the front of a squad of "powerful blacks" that cows anyone in their way.  They eventually find one of the Sennarians who had accompanied Lady Jane, sprawled dead in an alley with a bloody cutlass.  Bristol's immediate response is to declare that he'll bombard the town to rubble, and it's Amara who gets to point out that if "Mister Campbell" is being held hostage somewhere, that might not be a good idea.  So instead Bristol gets to make a dramatic entrance at the local tavern and demand that someone return his second officer to him before he levels the city.

An official steps forward and respectfully explains that there was an English ship docked that afternoon, and it left them a proclamation from Lord High Governor Sir Charles Stukely of Nevis, promising a bounty of two hundred pounds gold for the head of Captain Thomas Bristol, and an equal amount for the pirate's second officer if delivered alive.  Dramatic musical sting!

This news, oddly enough, makes Bristol relax.  "Terrible calmness," I guess.  He laughs "as sharp as the ring of a cutlass on steel," and asks if any of the tavern's patrons want to try to collect the bounty on him, but they all politely decline.  So Bristol and Amara and the rest return to the Falcon to set sail for Nevis and the climax.

I guess this story might be fair for its day.  Like its main character insisted that he was equal to the black men under his command, even if the author has a habit of using demeaning language when referring to them.  And the female character and implied love interest got to dress up and play pirate before she was captured by the villain.  Progressive for the 1930's, right?


Back to Chapter 5

Forward to Chapter 7

Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 5 - Our Pirate Hero Finally Steals a Boat

Time passes.  The Dutchman finally sinks four days after beaching itself on the shoal, and it takes another week for "the blacks" to recover from their ordeal enough to work.  But once they're hale and hearty again, "these blacks" work hard, hollowing out logs salvaged from the ship to make simple canoes, which when outfitted with Pacific-style outriggers under Bristol's direction, can be used as attack craft.  The Dutchman's sails are converted into a village of tents for everyone, and midshipman "Jim Campbell" gets her own quarters.

But for the first few days, she was reluctant to go far from her tent.  There was something terrifying about these blacks, an undercurrent of bitterness which she felt rather than saw.  But as she became used to seeing them and she saw that they had nothing but reverence for her, she grew bolder and went about with Bristol.  

Oddly enough, I can't tell whether or not any of the Sennarians have figured out Jane's gender.  They never interact with her 'on-screen,' and Amara only talks to Bristol.  Oh wait, Bristol calls her "my lady" in front of Amara at the end of the chapter.  Guess these gentlemen are well-behaved former galley slaves.  Or maybe they didn't find out until then, and Hubbard left out Amara's bug-eyed exclamation of "He's a whaaaa?"

At night, when she lay alone in her tent listening to the incessant thunder of the surf, she was sometimes afraid of the power which had been thrown into Bristol's hands.  He was tempered steel, physically and mentally, like a long Toledo blade.  Into his eyes had come a light which was exciting, but far from reassuring.  It was the clear, heady look of one who sees far beyond the horizon.

Ah, our hero is both the rebellious type and a visionary.  Suh-woon.

"The blacks" don't bother to try to hide themselves from any passing ships, and Bristol is hoping that someone will be stupid enough to come up and attack them.  This doesn't happen, but one afternoon an indeterminate amount of time later, a lookout spots a Spanish ship on the horizon, slowly sailing home.  Two hours later it's dusk, the ship is close to Bristol's island, and it's time to attack.

Now, the title of this chapter is "Bristol and His Crew Use Strategy."  And here I think we fall prey to the same problem underlining most if not all of Hubbard's work - he's not an expert on anything he writes about.  He can't convincingly write a super-scientist hero because the author doesn't understand science, he can't write a revolutionary doctor because the author doesn't know much about medicine, and so forth.  In this case, the brilliant strategy Bristol comes up with to capture the Spanish vessel is to, drumroll please, launch a night raid.  They'll never see that coming.  Because it's dark.

The poor Spaniards aren't expecting a bunch of attack canoes to launch from one of the islands they passed around sunset, and are oblivious as "Black hands" throw lines up to their vessel and "Black bodies" climb aboard.  Someone fires a pistol, another person shouts "Filibusteros!"  And I'll admit that I had to look this up in case Hubbard pulled a particularly funny translation fail, but it turns out the word "filibuster" is derived from a Spanish term (in turn picked up from the Dutch vrijbuiter) specifically describing 17th century Caribbean pirates preying on ships sailing to and from Spain's New World colonies.  So credit where it's due, Hubbard did his homework for once.  He never bothered to learn how radiation works, but he was willing to go the distance and use a more precise word than "piratas!" for this pulp story.

The actual battle for the ship lasts less than half a page.

Sailors tumbled out of the hatches.  An officer leaped from the rear cabin, pistols in hand.  He stood there, paralyzed by the sight that met his gaze.  A solid avalanche of black was sweeping down upon him.  He fired. A sword hacked him down.  The avalanche passed over his body and swept across the deck.

Note that the Sennarians disdained firearms when it came to selecting weapons, and all of the these towering warriors are swinging away with cutlasses.  It's not like muskets are doing the Spanish any good, and when Bristol drags a man out of the ship's cabins and demands his surrender, the captain (en Español) begs our hero not to kill him and says the ship is his.  And that's it, the cowering Spaniards are all herded together on the forecastle, "the blacks" are victorious and grinning at each other.  Three Sennarians died in the assault, no word on the Spanish casualties.

Bristol orders the dropped weapons be collected, then offers the Spanish a trade - they can have the canoes and the nearby island base and its supplies, while Bristol and his crew take the ship.  The captain was expecting to be executed, and can only stammer his praise of our hero's gallantry before being kicked off the boat.  And that's it.  Our hero has successfully stolen a ship, by which I mean a bunch of other fellas did the lifting while he made some dramatic demands in a fancy white shirt.

"Amara," said Bristol, leaning against the rail, "that was an excellent job.  Aboard this ship you'll probably find plenty of clothing and a full larder, as the Spaniard must have restocked before putting to sea.

"But if they didn't, and we just gave our prisoners all our old supplies before checking to see if we could have any replacements, boy is my face gonna be red."

Tell your men to find themselves what they want, and appoint me a watch to handle the sails until morning."

Amara saluted.  "Very good, Captain sir."

Bristol turned to Lady Jane.  "And I guess this makes full-fledged buccaneers out of us, my lady.  That first shot nicked me, thanks to this white shirt.  Let's go aft and tie it up."

As far as I can tell, this is not a euphemism for shtupping.  I mean, I've only skimmed the next chapter, but I can't find anything to suggest that our hero and the only female character in the story have surrendered to narrative convention and gotten together.  Maybe you couldn't be too obvious with that sort of thing in 1935.


Back to Chapter 4

Forward to Chapter 6