Savages

A white man who shuns his own kind in favor of Tongan and Samoan natives, he’s the skipper of a speedy schooner known as the terror of the South Seas. Tanned and bearded, with steely gray eyes and a well-muscled frame, he is naturally taciturn but always has the aspect of a leopard about to spring. He’s been accused of piracy, smuggling, blackbirding, and whisky-running, but nobody really knows exactly who or what Hurricane Williams is. Not even young Gilbert Lang, who befriends this enigmatic figure in the Solomon Islands while on a quest for vengeance against the deep-dyed villains responsible for his brother’s death. From the Introduction by pulp-fiction historian Tom Krabacher: “When Savages first appeared as a four-part serial in the pages of Adventure, Gordon Ray Young was a relatively new writer who had published 22 stories of various lengths and types in that magazine during the preceding two and a half years. Savages was his twenty-third, and his first serious attempt at a novel. The result is one of the greatest tales of South Seas adventure ever to appear in the pulps.”