CUTLASS EMPIRE

From the color and excitement in the story of Henry Morgan, buccaneer and driving Welshman, Mason has compounded and historical novel of adventure and fact to satisfy even critical tastes. Driven from England because of his royalist beliefs, learning to hate the Spaniards with deepest vengeance. Morgan early proves his value to the roving renegades of the Caribbean, glosses over his depradations by his gifts to the Crown, achieves the impossible by taking Spanish strongholds with his small forces, and is properly rewarded by the King on his return to England by Knighthood and the governorship of Jamaica. Mason gives Morgan his due, as man and empire builder, makes the dog eat dog policies of the era a fighting, killing panorama, highlights incidental characters and situations to bring out the vigor and grim reality of the new colonies' struggle for existence. A portrait as well as a landscape of a period of high adventure.