hael
Scott, or than the mere rogue and floating footpad we meet in _The
Master of Ballantrae_. There was also room, it must be candidly allowed,
for something better than Captain Cain of the _Avenger_. The _Pirate_ is
not among the books which one most willingly re-reads out of Marryat's
very respectably lengthy list of stories. Yet it is not without gaiety,
and, as is ever the case with him, the man-of-war scenes are all alive.
Captain Plumpton, and Mr. Markital the first lieutenant, and Edward
Templemore the midshipman, are credible. Whenever Marryat has to
introduce us to a man-of-war, he could draw on inexhaustible treasure of
reminiscences, or of what is for the story-writer's purpose quite as
good, of types and incidents which his imagination had made out of
incidents supplied by his memory. The naval parts of the _Pirate_ are no
doubt variations on what he had recently written in _Midshipman Easy_,
but they are not mere repetitions, and they have the one saving quality
of life, which will make even a poorly constructed story readable.

It is impossible to say as much for the captain and crew of the
_Avenger_. Cain is not only not a pirate, but he is not a human being.
He is a Byronic or even a Michael Scottish hero--an impossible monster,
compounded of one virtue and a thousand crimes. There never was any such
person, and even on paper he is not tolerable for more than a paragraph
or two without the help of verse. The crew of the _Avenger_ is an
inconceivable ship's complement for any pirate. Credulity itself cannot
even in early life accept the capture of the Portuguese carrack. Marryat
drew on his recollections of the time when he was a midshipman with
Cochrane in the _Imperieuse_, for the figure of the old steersman, who
sticks to his post under the fire of the _Avenger_. He had seen the
mate of a Spanish trading ship behaving in just that way when attacked
by boats from the _Imperieuse_. When he was asked why he did not
surrender, though he was mortally wounded and had no chance of escape,
he answered that he was an 'old Christian.' The term, which by the way
only means a pure-blooded Spaniard, puzzled Marryat and his shipmates.
It is not wonderful that he did not understand its meaning, since in
spite of campaigning in Spain, and many visits to Spanish ports, he
never learnt to avoid the absurd blunder of putting the title Don before
a surname. But if the steersman is drawn from life, so are not either
the c