Dick Dead-Eye, the Boy Smuggler

This issue of *Beadle and Adams* presents the opening installment of Colonel Prentiss Ingraham's "Dick Dead-Eye, the Boy Smuggler; or, The Cruise of the Vixen," a nautical adventure serial. The narrative follows a chase between the revenue-cutter and a smuggling sloop called the Flyaway along a coastal island archipelago. Dick, an eighteen-year-old smuggler, captains the sloop while Estelle's father Jasper Lucas pilots the cutter—initially appearing treacherous. When the Flyaway's mast snaps during a storm, Dick sets the vessel aflame and escapes by boat. The cutter subsequently wrecks on a reef, apparently through Lucas's deliberate action. Estelle, Jasper's fifteen-year-old daughter, rows alone toward the wrecked revenue-cutter to rescue its crew, defying her father's warnings. Dick approaches in a larger boat with four oarsmen, also apparently heading toward the wreck.