The Mad Skipper

# The Mad Skipper: A Cruise After the Maelstrom

By Roger Starbuck, this serialized maritime adventure depicts two deserters from a whale-ship anchored in San Carlos, Chiloe Island. Frank Harland, a boat-steerer, and Joe Plaush, a Portuguese dwarf cabin-boy, hide in a cave after deserting due to harsh treatment. When local vigilantes begin searching for runaways, they encounter a young American woman of remarkable resourcefulness who warns them of betrayal and shelters them in a doctor's study. Her father, a patent-medicine inventor preparing to return to the United States aboard the whaling vessel Monongahela, offers assistance. The narrative combines nautical action, romantic elements, and character development, emphasizing loyalty between the protagonists while establishing a plot centered on their escape from colonial authorities and return passage home aboard the departing whale-ship.