LOG CABIN NOBLE
By
Log cabins don't have much to do with this tale of swashbuckling on the high seas in the days of the dying Spanish Main, except that's where our hearty protagonists lived until some marauding Indians axed their settlement. They include William Phips who follows his ""star"" to fame and fortune and Royal Governorship of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; his semi-pirate pal, John Dale, who by spoils and a felicitous marriage manages most nicely to keep up with the Bermuda Joneses; finally Pegeen Hammond, Dale's one-time common-law spouse, who achieves her destiny by hooking a temporarily out-of-money young(er) nobleman. At the center of their fortunes is the treasure-hunting lust, achieved beyond their wildest dreams in the salvaging of Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, courtesy of hurricanes and lousy Spanish ship-building. The tale, which apparently has some tenuous connection with historical reality, is serviced by the kind of slog-along prose employed only by those who have been writing this kind of novel longer than they probably care to remember for an audience which is presumably still there.