Resumen
Resumen de Los Ratones Blancos
Para quién es
Readers who love swashbuckling adventure, witty banter, secret codes and underground passages, and a romance that grows between two stubborn, quick-minded people. It suits anyone who enjoys a good-hearted hero in a tight spot.
De qué trata este libro
The White Mice is an adventure novel by Richard Harding Davis, the American reporter and storyteller who died in 1916. It mixes a daring rescue, a political uprising and a love story, all set in Venezuela. It begins with a fable about a lion and a mouse, then asks you to believe that small helpers can matter a great deal.
The tale opens in two places at once. In a damp cell beneath the fortress of San Carlos at Porto Cabello, an old general named Miguel Rojas lies dying. On the far side of the world, in a tea house in Yokohama, four carefree young Americans invent a society for saving lives and call themselves the White Mice. The joke is idle. Then one of them, Rodman Forrester, is sent by his father to inspect a lighthouse in the very harbor where Rojas is kept.
You get a fast, funny and warm story with spies, secret messages, a buried tunnel and a heroine who will not sit still. In the first key point, we begin where the game begins, in a Japanese tea house with a toast and a medal that nobody has yet earned.
En este resumen
- 1A fable and a toast in YokohamaFree
- 2A father, a company and a cynic
- 3Two friends take a hard look at a prison
- 4Curaçao, spies and a startling attack
- 5A daughter, a riddle and a hidden tunnel
- 6Rivals, a duel and a father's secret
- 7Moonlight, sharks and the digging begins
- 8What the story is really about
- 9How the story is told
Idea clave 1 de 9
A fable and a toast in Yokohama
The book begins with the old fable of the lion and the mouse. The narrator draws a cheerful moral from it: this is a small world, and a helper may turn up where you least expect one. Then the story turns to General Don Miguel Rojas, once called the Lion of Valencia. He is sixty years old and has spent two years in a dungeon at Porto Cabello, where harbor water seeps through the limestone and the candle sputters.
The scene then jumps across the globe to the tea house of the Hundred and One Steps in Yokohama. Four young Americans sit shoeless on mats. Rodman Forrester, called Roddy, is a former Yale pitcher and the son of a famous builder of lighthouses. His close friend Peter de Peyster is from an old Hudson River family. A third is a rich brewer's son who calls himself the Orchid Hunter, and the fourth is a navy lieutenant named Perry.
Perry explains that the most valuable one aboard a submarine is a white mouse. It lives in the engine room and squeals when it smells gas, so that the chief can find the leak. The Orchid Hunter is inspired. He founds the Secret Order of the White Mice, whose purpose is to save somebody's life, and he names himself Most Exalted Secret White Mouse. Medals, he decides, go to everyone, every time.
The founding dinner is a loud success, and the young men sing as they ride home through the night. The narrator slyly adds that their voices seem to carry across the ocean to a sick man in a cell. He smiles in his sleep, because in his dream the prison gates swing open. It is a playful promise to the reader.
This opening sets the tone for the whole book. The heroes begin as idlers, and their order is a joke. The author wants you to notice how far a joke can travel once somebody decides to take it seriously.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Los Ratones Blancos
What is The White Mice about?
It follows Roddy Forrester and Peter de Peyster, two young Americans in Venezuela who try to rescue an imprisoned general. Along the way they meet his brave daughter, face spies and rivals, and use a secret tunnel found through a coded message.
Why are they called the White Mice?
The name comes from a naval story about a white mouse in a submarine's engine room that squeals at leaking gas and saves the crew. The friends form an order whose members must each save someone's life.
Who is General Rojas in The White Mice?
General Don Miguel Rojas, called the Lion of Valencia, is a respected statesman and diplomat. President Alvarez fears his popularity and locks him in a damp dungeon at the fortress of San Carlos in Porto Cabello.
When was The White Mice written, and is it a true story?
Richard Harding Davis wrote this adventure as fiction in the early twentieth century. The characters and plot are invented, although the setting draws on the real politics and coasts of Venezuela and the Caribbean.
Is The White Mice easy to read?
It reads quickly. The chapters are built around vivid scenes and lively dialogue, the humor is steady, and the plot moves from one clear goal to the next, so the story is easy to follow.