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قراءة كتاب The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave among the moors...
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The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave among the moors...
THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF
CAPTAIN DANGEROUS:
WHO WAS A SOLDIER, A SAILOR, A MERCHANT, A SPY, A SLAVE
AMONG THE MOORS, A BASHAW IN THE SERVICE
OF THE GRAND TURK,
AND
Died at last in his own House in Hanover Square.
A NARRATIVE IN OLD-FASHIONED ENGLISH.
ATTEMPTED BY
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
1863.
[The right of Translation is reserved.]
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS,
CHANDOS STREET.
ALEXANDER MUNRO,
Sculptor,
THIS BOOK,
IN TOKEN OF SINCERE AND ADMIRING FRIENDSHIP, IS
CORDIALLY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE.
Bearing these facts in mind, the travels of Captain Dangerous, widely extended as they were, may not appear to the present generation as very uncommon or very surprising. But such travellers as my hero, formed, in the last century, a class apart, and were, in most cases, very strange men. Diplomatic agents belonging to the aristocracy rarely ventured beyond the confines of Europe. The Ambassadors sent to eastern climes were usually, although accredited from the English Court, maintained at the charge of great commercial corporations, such as the Turkey and Russia Companies, and were selected less on the score of their having handles to their names, or being born Russells, Greys, and Elliots, than because they had led roving and adventurous lives, and had fought in or traded with the countries where they were appointed to reside. Beyond these, the travelling class was made up of merchants, buccaneers, spies, and, notably, of political adventurers, and English, Scotch, and Irish Romanist Priests. The unhappy political dissensions which raged in this country from the time of the Great Rebellion to the accession of George the Third, and the infamous penal laws against the Roman Catholics, periodically drove into banishment vast numbers of loyal gentlemen and their families, and ecclesiastics of the ancient faith, who expatriated themselves for conscience' sake, or through dread of the bloody enactments levelled at those who worshipped God as their fathers had done before them. The Irish and Scotch soldiers who took service under continental sovereigns sprinkled the army lists of France, of Spain, and of Austria with O's and Macs. There was scarcely a European city without an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic monastery or nunnery, and scarcely a seaport without a colony of British exiles cast upon foreign shores after the tempests of the Boyne, of Sheriffmuir, of Preston, or of Culloden. When these refugees went abroad it was to remain for ten, for twenty, for thirty years, or for life. The travelling of the present century is spasmodic, that of the last century was chronic.
I do not know whether the "Adventures" I have ascribed to Captain Dangerous will be readily recognised as "strange." To some they may appear exaggerated and distorted, to others merely strained and dull. If truth, however, be stranger than fiction, I may plead something in abatement; for although I am responsible for the thread of the story and the conduct of the narrative, there is not one Fact set down as having marked the career of the Captain that has been drawn from imagination. For the story of Arabella Greenville, for the sketch of the Unknown Lady, for the exploits of the