Have caution when accepting your sudden fabulous inheritance. David Balfour, the protagonist of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel Kidnapped, foolishly allows himself to be hoodwinked by his sinister uncle. David ends up packed up on a brig bound for America and slavery in this terrific novel that turns out to be mostly about Jacobites.
The first several chapters feel like a pirate adventure as Stevenson admirably describes life aboard that bad brig upon which David finds himself.
Here I lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel. There were some among them that had sailed with the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some were men that had run from the king’s ships, and went with a halter round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying goes, were “at a word and a blow” with their best friends. Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.
Then they take on another prisoner; a prominent Jacobite called Alan Breck--a real person, despite this being a work of fiction. The novel is set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745 and the bulk of the book follows Alan and David in a desperate journey across Scotland. Along the way, they run into other prominent, real life Jacobites. This is all despite the fact that David is a Whig, which makes his tumultuous friendship with Alan all the more endearing.
We were no sooner done eating than Cluny brought out an old, thumbed, greasy pack of cards, such as you may find in a mean inn; and his eyes brightened in his face as he proposed that we should fall to playing.
Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard. To be sure, I might have pleaded my fatigue, which was excuse enough; but I thought it behoved that I should bear a testimony. I must have got very red in the face, but I spoke steadily, and told them I had no call to be a judge of others, but for my own part, it was a matter in which I had no clearness.
Cluny stopped mingling the cards. “What in deil’s name is this?” says he. “What kind of Whiggish, canting talk is this, for the house of Cluny Macpherson?”
“I will put my hand in the fire for Mr. Balfour,” says Alan. “He is an honest and a mettle gentleman, and I would have ye bear in mind who says it. I bear a king’s name,” says he, cocking his hat; “and I and any that I call friend are company for the best. But the gentleman is tired, and should sleep; if he has no mind to the cartes, it will never hinder you and me. And I’m fit and willing, sir, to play ye any game that ye can name.”
Alan Breck is an attractive character but he's the least interesting of Stevenson's line of morally ambiguous men I've read so far. He doesn't have the enigmatic nature of Long John Silver or James Durie in The Master of Ballantrae. Or Doctor Jekyll. But there's enough to make Kidnapped an engaging road narrative with a satisfying conclusion.
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