The Project Gutenberg EBook of Percival Keene, by Frederick Marryat

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Title: Percival Keene

Author: Frederick Marryat

Release Date: May 22, 2007 [EBook #21572]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCIVAL KEENE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Percival Keene, by Captain Marryat.

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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are
among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still
in print.

Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.

"Percival Keene" was published in 1842, the nineteenth book to flow from
Marryat's pen.

This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted
in 2003, and again in 2005.

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PERCIVAL KEENE, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT.

CHAPTER ONE.

A few miles from the town of Southampton there is an old mansion-house,
which has been for centuries known as Madeline Hall, in the possession
of the de Versely family. It is a handsome building, surrounded by a
finely timbered park of some extent, and, what is more important, by
about 12,000 acres of land, which also appertain to it. At the period
in which I commence this history, there resided in this mansion an
elderly spinster of rank, named the Honourable Miss Delmar, sister of
the late Lord de Versely and aunt to the present earl, and an Honourable
Captain Delmar, who was the second son of the deceased nobleman. This
property belonged to the Honourable Miss Delmar, and was at her entire
disposal upon her decease.

The Honourable Captain Delmar, at the time I am speaking of, commanded a
frigate employed upon what was designated channel service, which in
those days implied tha