Other editions of book The Madman and the Pirate

A Classic Tale... A beautiful island lying like a gem on the breast of the great Pacific—a coral reef surrounding, and a calm lagoon within, on the glass-like surface of which rests a most piratical-looking schooner. Such is the scene to which we invite our reader’s attention for a little while. At the time of which we write it was an eminently peaceful scene. So still was the atmosphere, so unruffled the water, that the island and the piratical-looking schooner seemed to float in the centre of a duplex world, where every cloudlet in the blue above had its exact counterpart in the blue below. No sounds were heard save the dull roar of the breaker that fell, at long regular intervals, on the seaward side of the reef, and no motion was visible except the back-fin of a shark as it cut a line occasionally on the sea, or the stately sweep of an albatross, as it passed above the schooner’s masts and cast a look of solemn inquiry upon her deck. But that schooner was not a pirate. She was an honest trader—at least so it was said—though what she traded in we have no more notion than the albatross which gazed at her with such inquisitive sagacity. Her decks were not particularly clean, her sails by no means snow-white. She had, indeed, four goodly-sized carronades, but these were not an extraordinary part of a peaceful trader’s armament in those regions, where man was, and still is, unusually savage. The familiar Union Jack hung at her peak, and some of her men were sedate-looking Englishmen, though others were Lascars and Malays, of the cut-throat type, of whom any wickedness might be expected when occasion served.

“Mr. Ballantyne is as lively and vivacious as usual. If the incidents strike us as being somewhat startling and sensational in their character, this will hardly be esteemed a fault with boys, who love about all things a story which has plenty of movement and adventure to it. The subject, moreover, turns entirely upon mission work in the South Sea Islands, the pirate Rosco, who was partly the cause of Leppao becoming a madman, being in the end himself subjugated by the power of the gospel.” -The Congregationalist, Volume 12, January, 1883 “The fathers, mothers, guardians, uncles and aunts who wish to find an acceptable birthday or Christmas present for a healthy-minded boy of normal tastes cannot possibly go wrong if they buy a book with Mr. Ballantyne’s name of the title-page.” -Academy “We have here yet another boy’s book from the unwearied pen of Mr. Ballantyne. The scene of the story is laid in that ever attractive land of romance, the South Sea Islands, and, in spite of its highly sensational title, there is much about missionary enterprise in the book, as well as the usual topics so dear to boys – mutiny, piracy and shipwreck. ‘The Madman and the Pirate’ will be a welcome addition to the Christmas holiday library.” -The Literary Churchman and Church Fortnightly, January 6, 1883 “Excellent…His narrative has a very romantic look…The tale is of a stirring kind.” -The Spectator, December 1, 1883 Get set for high-seas adventure with The Madman and the Pirate, a gripping page-turner that will leave you wanting more. After being abandoned on a seemingly deserted island in the Pacific, the 'Madman' of the title happens upon a former pirate who has also been forced to make his home there. Despite mutual distaste for each other, the odd pair eventually find their way into and out of a number of scrapes and close calls.

"Oh! father," groaned Orlando, as he fell before the blow of the mutineer.With a terrible cry of consternation Zeppa stooped to pick up his child -- only to be felled himself with a handspike, as the mutinous crew rushed into the cabin."Overboard wi' them all!" shouted one of the men.One of the ruffians easily raised the Orlando's light frame and bore him to the deck. Next moment a sharp cry and splash were heard. Groggily Zeppa understood -- for he had seen his son carried away. With a wild shout he burst from those who held him, and would certainly have gained the deck and leaped overboard had not a mutineer from behind felled him a second time! Orlando -- cast overboard . . . and he was powerless to help!

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The Madman and the Pirate is an exciting pirate tale from the master of the pirate fiction genre, R.M. Ballantyne.One of the young men influenced by Ballantyne was Robert Louis Stevenson. He was so impressed with the story of The Coral Island (1857) that he would later base portions of his famous book Treasure Island (1881) on themes found in Ballantyne. He honoured Ballantyne in the introduction to Treasure Island.Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh on 24 April 1825, the ninth of ten children and the youngest son, to Alexander Thomson Ballantyne (1776–1847) and his wife Anne (1786–1855). Alexander was a newspaper editor and printer in the family firm of "Ballantyne & Co" based at Paul's Works on the Canongate,[2] and Robert's uncle James Ballantyne (1772–1833) was the printer for Scottish author Sir Walter Scott.[3] In 1832-33 the family is known to have been living at 20 Fettes Row, in the northern New Town of Edinburgh.[2] A UK-wide banking crisis in 1825 resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business the following year with debts of £130,000,[4] which led to a decline in the family's fortunes.[3]Ballantyne went to Canada aged 16, and spent five years working for the Hudson's Bay Company. He traded with the local Native Americans for furs, which required him to travel by canoe and sleigh to the areas occupied by the modern-day provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, experiences that formed the basis of his novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856).{r |ODNB}} His longing for family and home during that period impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. Ballantyne recalled in his autobiographical Personal Reminiscences in Book Making (1893) that "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired.In 1847 Ballantyne returned to Scotland to discover that his father had died. He published his first book the following year, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America, and for some time was employed by the publishers Messrs Constable. In 1856 he gave up business to focus on his literary career, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated.[1]The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island (1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Fighting the Whales (1866), Deep Down (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and more than 100 other books followed in regular succession, his rule being to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described.[1] The Gorilla Hunters. A tale of the wilds of Africa (1861) shares three characters with The Coral Island: Jack Martin, Ralph Rover and Peterkin Gay. Here Ballantyne relied factually on Paul du Chaillu's Exploration in Equatorial Guinea, which had appeared early in the same year.[6]The Coral Island is the most popular of the Ballantyne novels still read and remembered today,[7] but because of one mistake he made in that book, in which he gave an incorrect thickness of coconut shells, he subsequently attempted to gain first-hand knowledge of his subject matter. For instance, he spent some time living with the lighthouse keepers at the Bell Rock before writing The Lighthouse, and while researching for Deep Down he spent time with the tin miners of Cornwall.[1]In 1866 Ballantyne married Jane Grant (c. 1845 – c. 1924), with whom he had three sons and three daughters.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

The Madman, Antonio Zeppa, is abandoned on Ratinga, an island in the Pacific, where there later appears a miserable ex-pirate called Richard Rosco. The two start up a sort of love-hate relationship. The natives put Rosco on a fire to burn him at the stake, but he is rescued by Zeppa, who carries him up to his cave in the mountains, and tends to his injured feet. Eventually a vessel calls at the island, with Zeppa’s son on board. From then on the story winds to an end, with everyone who belongs there safely back home in Britain.