Resumen
Resumen de La dama y el pirata
Para quién es
Readers who love boyhood games, river chases and old-fashioned courtship told with a smile will feel at home here. It suits anyone who enjoys a talkative narrator, a faithful dog and a good-humored quarrel over love.
De qué trata este libro
The Lady and the Pirate is a comic romantic adventure by Emerson Hough, an American writer who died in 1923. It is told by a rich, retired lawyer just past thirty. He has buried himself in a log house beside a Middle Western trout stream, hoping to forget a woman. One evening two runaway boys in a homemade pirate boat capture him, and his quiet life ends.
Hough lets the lawyer tell his own tale, with dry humor, a fondness for old philosophers and a stubborn faith in logic. From the woods the story runs down small rivers into the Mississippi, past St. Louis and Vicksburg and Natchez, and on to the swamps and bays of the Louisiana coast. Along the way there are a fistfight, a pearl, a stray dog, a stolen yacht, bottles thrown overboard with messages, and a restaurant supper in New Orleans.
You get a book that plays at being a pirate story while it quietly asks what a grown man owes to his own heart. It is full of speeches, schemes and small disasters, and it keeps the boys, the dog and the lady in view throughout. Let us begin where it begins, on the bank of the trout stream, with a voice that cries out a challenge.
En este resumen
- 1A grown man is captured by boy piratesFree
- 2An oath of blood makes him a shipmate
- 3A fight, a pearl and a hard lesson
- 4The yacht is taken at Natchez
- 5Daily parleys and a hideout in the bayou
- 6A supper at Luigi's with danger at the door
- 7The Gulf, a gale and a wreck on the shoals
- 8What the story is really about
- 9How the story is told
Idea clave 1 de 9
A grown man is captured by boy pirates
The story opens on a summer evening on the narrator's own land. He sits beside his trout stream, hoping to catch a mosquito of the kind called Anopheles in a little glass vial, because he is collecting them. Then a high, shaky voice cries out a challenge and calls him a caitiff, an old word for a wretch. He looks up and sees a small boat half hidden among the alders.
The boat carries two boys, neither older than fourteen, and it is dressed as a pirate ship. Fresh skull and crossbones are painted on the bow, and a black flag flies from a willow stick. The red haired leader rests an enormous revolver on a forked staff and takes aim at the lowest button of the man's waistcoat. The man answers calmly that he is already out of the water and invites the crew to send a boat over for a parley.
The second boy is fair haired and blue eyed, and he is called Jimmy. The narrator knows at a glance that he is a dreamer and an artist in the making. Both boys wear far too many belts, knives and pistols for their size. The man, a successful lawyer who has not smiled much in three years, feels his blood tingle as he looks at them. Here are youth and adventure, and he has missed both.
The boys give their pirate names as Jean Lafitte and Henri L'Olonnois and say they are bound for the Spanish Main to look for treasure. The man swears a pirate oath on the point of his hunting knife. He admits he was thinking of two things when they came, a mosquito and a woman named Helena. He cannot say where either of them is, and the sound of her name brings back the old sadness.
He then proposes that they all conquer the castle in the forest, which is really his own log house. His Japanese servant Hiroshimi opens the door with perfect calm. The rooms are full of animal skins, mounted heads, fishing rods, rare books and cases of preserved mosquitoes. One boy says only that it is great, and the man is more pleased by this than by any praise he has ever had. He explains to the reader that he came here to make himself young, since he never had a boyhood.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Questions about La dama y el pirata
What is The Lady and the Pirate about?
It tells how a rich, retired lawyer is captured by two runaway boys playing pirates, then chases a yacht down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to win back the woman he loves.
Who is Black Bart in The Lady and the Pirate?
Black Bart is the name the boys give the lawyer who tells the story. He is called Harry by Helena and Peterson, and he is a former lawyer who hides in the woods to forget her.
Who are Jean Lafitte and L'Olonnois in the book?
They are the pirate names of two boys, John Saunders and Jimmy Henderson. They take their names from The Pirate's Own Book and act as the narrator's lieutenants. Jimmy is also the nephew of Helena Emory.
When was The Lady and the Pirate written and is it a true story?
Emerson Hough wrote it in the early twentieth century as a comic romance. The characters and the yacht chase are invented, though the settings, such as the Mississippi, New Orleans and the Louisiana coast, are real.
Is The Lady and the Pirate easy to read?
It is approachable, with short chapters, brisk action and a lively, funny narrator. The boys' pirate talk and the lawyer's speeches are easy to follow and give the story a playful rhythm.