Happy Captain Blood Day!

So, September 19th is the day Peter Blood is sentenced to slavery in Barbados — if he’d been tried any sooner, he would have just been sentenced to death, instead of having the opportunity to become the coolest pirate ever. So you should celebrate, preferably by reading — or rereading — some Sabatini. Here are a few suggestions.

Captain Blood Day, 2008

It was not until two months later - on the 19th of September, if
you must have the actual date - that Peter Blood was brought to
trial, upon a charge of high treason.  We know that he was not
guilty of this; but we need not doubt that he was quite capable
of it by the time he was indicted.  Those two months of inhuman,
unspeakable imprisonment had moved his mind to a cold and deadly
hatred of King James and his representatives.  It says something
for his fortitude that in all the circumstances he should still
have had a mind at all.  Yet, terrible as was the position of this
entirely innocent man, he had cause for thankfulness on two counts.
The first of these was that he should have been brought to trial at
all; the second, that his trial took place on the date named, and
not a day earlier.  In the very delay which exacerbated him lay -
although he did not realize it - his only chance of avoiding the
gallows.

Happy Captain Blood Day!

Today is September 19th, which means that it’s also Captan Blood Day, a holiday of my own invention.

See, a number of years ago, after a rereading of Captain Blood, the fact that Peter Blood is tried for treason on the 19th of September stuck in my mind, and I began to notice lots of other things that happened on the 19th. And, you know, the more things you remember in connection with a date, the easier it is to remember. So I figured, since I remember it, why shouldn’t I celebrate it? Captain Blood certainly deserves to be celebrated.

More advertisements.

The Sea-Hawk

By RAPHAEL SABATINI I2mo. Cloth. $1.25 net.

Sabatini has startled the reading public with this magnificent romance. It is a thrilling treat to find a vivid, clean-cut adventure yarn. Sincere in this we beg you brothers, fathers, husbands, and comfortable old bachelors, to read this tale and even to hand it on to your friends of the fairer sex, provided you are certain that they do not mind the glint of steel and the shrieks of dying captives.

The Woman in the Car

By RICHARD MARSH 12mo. $1.35 net.

Do you like a thrilling tale? If so, read this one and we almost guarantee that you will not stir from your chair until you turn the last page. As the clock struck midnight on one of the most fashionable streets of London in the Duchess of Ditchling’s handsome limousine, Arthur Towzer, millionaire mining magnate, is found dead at the wheel, horribly mangled. Yes, this is a tale during the reading of which you will leave your chair only to turn up the gas. When you are not shuddering, you are thinking; your wits are balanced against the mind and system of the famous Scotland Yard, the London detective headquarters. The men or women who can solve the mystery without reading the last few pages will deserve a reward, — they should apply for a position upon the Pinkerton force.

Captain Blood

Captain Blood is not only my favorite Sabatini novel; It’s one of my favorite books, period. See, it’s got pirates. The Sea Hawk has pirates, too, but it also has many unreasonable and/or painful bits, including an inexplicably evil younger brother. At some point, I will post about inexplicably evil younger brothers. They turn up more often than you’d think.

Anyway, Captain Blood:

Scaramouche

Like L.T. Meade, Rafael Sabatini is an old favorite of mine. Compared to her, he didn’t write that much — only about forty books. But that’s plenty, and anyway, he was a better writer. He also wrote a few history books, and was very careful about the history in his novels. I’ve read his book on Torquemada, and for a book on the Spanish Inquisition, it’s a pretty good read.

At their best, Sabatini’s books are full of snarky gentleman heroes, beautiful, boyish, ridiculously gullible girls, and lots of swashbuckling. And Scaramouche is definitely one of his best. It was also the first Sabatini I read, after coming across a reference to it in Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas. Scaramouche was Sabatini’s first big success, and is usually considered one of his two best books. Personally, I prefer Captain Blood, which is the other, but Scaramouche is pretty fantastic, too.