Munsey's Magazine, March 1920

# "The Adventures of Captain Henry Hale and Piracy"

This installment of John Fleming Wilson's serial adventure opens with the unnamed narrator, now operating a San Francisco marine junk business, recruited into a mysterious maritime venture. Captain Fosdick, a weathered beachcomber, arrives with a cryptic proposition: he claims to have discovered a two-thousand-ton ship lying unguarded forty-five hundred miles away, which can be refitted and brought to San Francisco for twelve thousand Mexican dollars. Despite his misgivings about Fosdick's ragged appearance and vague account, the narrator—Captain Henry Hale—agrees to a fifty-fifty partnership, supplying goods from his inventory, five thousand in gold, and six months of labor. After acquiring the schooner Spindrift and hiring a Chinese cook named Woy Long and a Kanaka crew, they depart San Francisco with gasoline-engines and a diving suit, embarking on an uncertain voyage. The narrator harbors doubts even as they sail.