Adam Penfeather, Buccaneer ‡

UK Publisher: Sampson Low, Marston and Co. Ltd. (London). First published 1940

eBook at Project Gutenberg

"Farnol's former popularity was on the wane at the beginning of the 1940s so that this & other of his later titles are comparatively rare. It regards the piratical adventures of Adam on the Spanish Main, together with his companion Antonia who has gone adventuring in the guise of a boy. Even critics who'd been hard on Farnol were won over by this one. The best book from his last period, it is something of a sequel to, & making a trilogy of Black Bartlemy's Treasure and Martin Conisby's Vengeance despite having a different central hero." Jessica Amanda Salmonson

"Another novel by this gifted author, which pulsates with adventure, romance, death and glory on the high seas in the period which he has made so peculiarly his own.  The atmosphere of the book is redolent of tall ships and the Spanish Main, described by a pen which has be no means lost any of its old cunning.  Indeed, the episode in which the young hero liberates his companions from their cruel thraldom by night, and together with the desperate pack of ex-galley-slaves boards and sets sail in the mighty treasure ship of the dons, is one of the best which he has ever written.  Throughout, one can feel the springing deck of the great galleon, hear the thunder of the wind in her rigging and scent the salt spray -- so graphically does Mr. Farnol bring to life again the gracious days of sailing ships and describe the hazardous and strange voyages undertaken by his diminutive but dynamic hero, Adam Penfeather, who, forsaking England after the unjust execution of his father, sails with a chance acquaintance, Absalom Troy, for an unknown destination on a reckless adventure.  With him he quixotically insists upon taking Antonia, a lovely waif whom he disguises as his half-brother, having saved her from the injustice of the laws of the period, and together with Absalom, that loveable but worthless rake who wins Antonia's heart to Adam's bitter disappointment, they plunge into a series of escapades which makes thrilling reading, and finally leads them to "those far latitudes where all were to find peril, many death, some few great fortune and success." Newport Vintage Books

A "prequel" to Black Bartlemy's Treasure and Martin Conisby's Vengeance