It has been often asked by the idly curious, Why Avenger, and of
what? Let us not seek to disclose the awful secret hidden under
that youthful jacket. Enough that there may have been that of
bitterness in his past life that he
"Whose soul would sicken o'er the heaving wave,"
or "whose soul would heave above the sickening wave," did not
understand. Only one knew him, perhaps too well--a queen of the
Amazons, taken prisoner off Terra del Fuego a week previous. She
loved the Boy Avenger. But in vain; his youthful heart seemed
obdurate.
"Hear me," at last he said, when she had for the seventh time
wildly proffered her hand and her kingdom in marriage, "and know
once and forever why I must decline your flattering proposal: I
love another."
With a wild, despairing cry, she leaped into the sea, but was
instantly rescued by the Pirate Prodigy. Yet, even in that supreme
moment, such was his coolness that on his way to the surface he
captured a mermaid, and, placing her in charge of his steward, with
directions to give her a stateroom, with hot and cold water, calmly
resumed his place by the Amazon's side.
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