[Gutenberg 49985] • The Story of Jack Ballister's Fortunes / Being the narrative of the adventures of a young gentleman of good family, who was kidnapped in the year 1719 and carried to the plantations of the continent of Virginia, where he fell in with that famous pirate Captain Edward Teach, or Blackbeard; of his escape from the pirates and the rescue of a young lady from out their hands

Betrayed by a wicked guardian, an English orphan finds himself kidnapped and set aboard a ship bound for the New World. Jack Ballister's dramatic adventures unfold in the American South of 1719, where the young hero is sold into slavery on a Virginia tobacco plantation. There he encounters a sinister plot, hatched by a savage crew of pirates under the command of none other than Captain Edward Teach, the infamous Blackbeard.

*The* *New York Times* greeted this rousing tale's publication with praise, calling it "a rattling good book . . . as full of adventure as the most exacting reader of romance could wish, and withal as healthy and clean, although it is founded on kidnapping and piracy." Author Howard Pyle wrote many such stories of derring-do, set in a variety of historical eras, and all richly embellished with period details. Pyle, best known as an artist, changed the way the world looked at illustration with a distinctive pen-and-ink style that recalls the medieval tradition of wood-engraved images. This excellent edition of Pyle's memorable story features all of his original illustrations.