The Queen of the Pirate Isle | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, [email protected].

THE QUEEN OF THE PIRATE ISLE
by Bret Harte

I first knew her as the Queen of the Pirate Isle. To the best of my
recollection she had no reasonable right to that title. She was only nine
years old, inclined to plumpness and good humor, deprecated violence,
and had never been to sea. Need it be added that she did NOT live in an
island and that her name was Polly?
Perhaps I ought to explain that she had already known other
experiences of a purely imaginative character. Part of her existence had
been passed as a Beggar Child,--solely indicated by a shawl tightly
folded round her shoulders, and chills; as a Schoolmistress,
unnecessarily severe; as a Preacher, singularly personal in his remarks,
and once, after reading one of Cooper's novels, as an Indian Maiden.
This was, I believe, the only instance when she had borrowed from
another's fiction. Most of the characters that she assumed for days and
sometimes weeks at a time were purely original in conception; some so
much so as to be vague to the general understanding. I remember that
her personation of a certain Mrs. Smith, whose individuality was
supposed to be sufficiently represented by a sunbonnet worn wrong
side before and a weekly addition to her family, was never perfectly
appreciated by her own circle although she lived the character for a
month. Another creation known as "The Proud Lady"--a being whose
excessive and unreasonable haughtiness was so pronounced as to give
her features the expression of extreme nausea--caused her mother so
much alarm that it had to be abandoned. This was easily effected. The
Proud Lady was understood to have died. Indeed, most of Polly's

impersonations were got rid of in this way, although it by no means
prevented their subsequent reappearance. "I thought Mrs. Smith was
dead," remonstrated her mother at the posthumous appearance of that
lady with a new infant. "She was buried alive and kem to!" said Polly
with a melancholy air. Fortunately, the representation of a resuscitated
person required such extraordinary acting, and was, through some
uncertainty of conception, so closely allied in facial expression to the
Proud Lady, that Mrs. Smith was resuscitated only for a day.
The origin of the title of the Queen of the Pirate Isle may be briefly
stated as follows:--
An hour after luncheon, one day, Polly, Hickory Hunt, her cousin, and
Wan Lee, a Chinese page, were crossing the nursery floor in a Chinese
junk.