Cutlass and Yardarm by Rosenthal, Eric

(Cape Town: Howard B. Timmins, 1954). 8vo; original blue boards; price-clipped pictorial dustwrapper; endpaper map; pp. 187 + (iii), incl. index; line drawings as head-pieces. Dustwrapper a little tanned; top edge of boards a bit eroded and fore-corners bumped; earlier owner's name on front pastedown; tape marks to rear free endpaper; some spotting. Fair to good. 'Who would fail to feel stirred by tales of pirates and mutinies in which South Africans have been concerned? Captain Kidd himself, King of all Pirates, had sundry exciting transactions with the authorities at Cape Town. There is the story of the great mutiny at Simonstown, which temporarily crippled the British Navy in our seas. Who but Eric Rosenthal would have found the astonishing facts about the "Boer Navy" and of the ship which Paul Kruger chartered to support the efforts of his burghers? Then he tells us of the terrible secret of Seaman Brookes of the Union Castle Line, - and there is the mystery of the "Perthshire," - and the story of a South African who, living in the Twentieth Century, had been chased by pirates as a youngster.' .