The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Bar, by George Manville Fenn

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Title: The Black Bar

Author: George Manville Fenn

Illustrator: M.L.P.

Release Date: May 5, 2007 [EBook #21326]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK BAR ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Black Bar, by George Manville Fenn.

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HMS Nautilus is on patrol off the west coast of Africa, intercepting
the American slave ships that were trying at that time to purchase
cargoes of slaves from the dealers, and then to take them across the
Atlantic in loathsome conditions. Slavery had been abolished in
British territories in 1772, many years before, and the British were
actively policing African waters in the hope of deterring the Americans
and the Portuguese from retaining the slave trade.

Nautilus has two midshipmen aboard, and one of these, Mark Vandean, is
the hero of the story. The book is in the usual Manville Fenn style,
with a succession of dreadful situations in which the hero finds
himself. "How ever does he extricate himself from this?" the reader is
continually asking. Of course he does, but it is often by means of
something quite unexpected.

A Black Bar is a device in heraldry, indicating that there is something
shameful in the wearer's ancestry. NH

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THE BLACK BAR, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

CHAPTER ONE.

TWO MIDDIES AND A MONKEY.

"We've done wrong, Van. There'll be a jolly row about it."

"Get out! What's the good of talking now? You were as ready to have
him as I was. Lie still, will you? or I'll pitch you overboard."

Two middies talking in the stern-sheets of the cutter belonging to Her
Majesty's fast little cruiser _Nautilus_, stationed on the west coast of
Africa "blackberrying," so the men called their duty, Tom Fillot, one of
their jokers, giving as the reason that the job was "black and berry
nasty." The sun shone as it can shine in the neighbourhood of the
equator, and the sea looked like so much glistening oil