The Floating Feather; or, Merle Monte's Treasure Island

This issue of *Beadle's Dime Novels* (August 15, 1882) features "The Floating Feather: Merle Monte's Treasure Island" by Col. Prentiss Ingraham, a companion to his "Merle, the Middy" series. The adventure-romance opens in New Orleans, where a mysterious well-dressed man rescues a woman and child from a runaway team by shooting a horse. The man is revealed to be Brandt, a notorious pirate masquerading as a gentleman. A heavily veiled woman recognizes him by a jeweled cimeter pin and confronts him with a pistol—she is Celine, his estranged wife, whom he had attempted to poison years earlier after robbing her father's home and killing her father. Brandt reveals he rescued the woman and child earlier that day, holding them as leverage. When Celine begs for her daughter's safety, Brandt remains unmoved by her pleas, setting the narrative toward further complications involving family, vengeance, and hidden identities.