Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 192

About this issue

Captain Kit, The Will-o'-the-Wisp: or, The Mystery of Montauk Point, by Lieutenant Harry Dennies Perry, U.S.N., is a serialized tale of Long Island Sound and the War of 1812. In this installment, Kittie Moore, a young woman of seventeen known among coastal sailors as the "Surf Queen," encounters a deranged hermit called the Mad Sailor on a country road. The man, a wreck of his former self since a shipwreck three years prior, has harbored resentment toward Kittie's family—particularly her mother, Grace Carroll, whom he claims rejected him decades earlier. When he attacks Kittie, a young naval officer, Lieutenant Ivan Ringold, appears on horseback and, after a violent struggle, shoots and mortally wounds the madman. Ringold escorts Kittie home, but declines to enter her house, instead requesting use of her sailboat to reach Lighthouse Island that evening. A storm approaches as he departs, carrying with him a mysterious tin box he discovered on the Mad Sailor's body. The narrative positions Ringold as a dangerously charming man, and hints at dark consequences ahead for Kittie.