The further Adventures of Zorro

The further Adventures of Zorro

The Further Adventures of Zorro opens on the coast of Southern California as a sinister, unlighted pirate vessel approaches shore under the command of a monstrous giant called Barbados. Accompanied by his evil lieutenant Sanchez, Barbados lands some forty men and leads them inland toward the sleeping town of Reina de Los Angeles. The raid has been arranged by a secret conspirator, who meets Barbados in the shadows at the town's edge: Captain Ramón, the commandante of the local presidio, who bears on his forehead the carved letter Z, the brand left by the highwayman Señor Zorro. Ramón has sent his own soldiers, led by the boastful Sergeant Pedro Gonzales, on a false errand to the south so that the town lies undefended. In exchange for directing the pirates to the richest houses and arranging safe passage, Ramón asks that a small force be sent to the nearby hacienda of Don Carlos Pulido to abduct the Señorita Lolita Pulido, who is to be wed the following day to Don Diego Vega, the nobleman secretly known as Señor Zorro. While the Pulido household makes its final wedding preparations, Don Diego hosts a bachelor supper for a company of caballeros, among them his closest friend Don Audre Ruiz. The evening turns festive when Don Diego produces the sword of Zorro and proposes a toast to its blade, though he insists his days of adventure are behind him. The gathering is interrupted first by distant shouts of pirates, and then by the raiders themselves, who burst through the front door. Don Diego leaps onto the table, seizes his sword, and engages Barbados in a duel, driving him backward and carving the letter Z into the wall before marking Barbados's forehead with the same brand. The caballeros rout the pirates from the house. Barbados, recognizing the mark, understands that the man Ramón most wanted harmed is Señor Zorro himself. The pirates flee with stolen horses and loot, and the caballeros pursue them on foot to the edge of the plaza before stopping. Old Fray Felipe emerges from the church to report that in the confusion a pirate seized the gem-studded golden goblet sacred to the mission. The friar takes a vow to recover it or not return. Moments later a wounded servant arrives from the Pulido hacienda: Sanchez's party has attacked, burned the buildings, cut down Don Carlos, and carried Señorita Lolita off toward the sea. Don Diego immediately assumes the costume of Señor Zorro and rides alone toward the coast while Don Audre organizes the remaining caballeros to follow. At the shore Zorro watches the pirates load their captive into a boat. He dives from a cliff into the sea and swims alongside the boat in darkness, kissing the señorita's bound hands through the water to signal his presence, then climbs the anchor chain of the pirate ship. Hidden in a storeroom adjoining the cabin where Lolita is held, he communicates with her through a crack in the wall, whispers encouragement, and through the same crack drives his blade through the heart of a pirate who threatens her. He then ranges the deck by night, ringing the ship's bell with thrown bolts to terrify the superstitious crew and branding Sanchez's forehead with the mark Z before retreating to hiding. When the pirate ship turns toward the coast with a pursuing trading schooner bearing the caballeros behind it, Barbados forces Zorro to walk the plank with an iron bar lashed to his wrists. Zorro sinks but works the weight free, surfaces, and is discovered floating by a native fisherman who reveres him for past kindnesses to the poor. The fisherman nurses Zorro back to health and reveals that the pirates' shore stronghold lies ten miles down the coast, close to the presidio of San Diego de Alcalá. Meanwhile Don Audre, Sergeant Gonzales, and Fray Felipe have persuaded the captain of the trading schooner to pursue the pirate craft. They hoist a sail painted with a giant Z as their battle flag. Sighting what appears to be Zorro's figure at the bowsprit, only to see him swept back into the sea by a swinging sail, they believe him dead and press on in grief and fury. The schooner closes on the pirate ship as it enters a small bay, but Barbados repels the attack with fire bombs that destroy the schooner's sails. The caballeros land and assault the pirates' beach stronghold while the schooner's crew circles to attack from the opposite side. Though both groups fight valiantly, they are overwhelmed by superior numbers. The trading schooner's captain and crew are killed, and the surviving caballeros, including Don Audre Ruiz and Sergeant Gonzales, are taken prisoner. Zorro, recovered and guided by the fisherman to the camp, arrives as the battle ends and joins the assault, singing his distinctive song and fighting his way through the pirates on horseback before escaping up the slope when the situation becomes hopeless. He makes his way back toward the camp in a woman's clothing taken from a nearby hut, enters through a window, and finds Captain Ramón in the storeroom attempting to assault the señorita. Zorro confronts Ramón at sword point, but Ramón shields himself with the señorita and shouts for the pirates. Barbados and his men burst in, overpower Zorro, bind his hands, and imprison him with the captured caballeros. Captain Ramón, playing a double game throughout, has convinced Barbados that he will lead soldiers from San Diego de Alcalá into a prepared ambush, after which the pirates can sack the town. In reality Ramón intends to guide the soldiers so as to destroy the pirates and pose as the rescuer of the señorita and the caballeros, hoping thereby to win favor with the Governor, rehabilitate his reputation among the gentry, and ultimately compel the grateful Don Carlos to give him Lolita's hand.

By Johnston McCulley · First published 1922 · Genre: Adventure, Picaresque, Romantic · 31 chapters · 77,717 words

First lines

Throughout a long summer day of more than a hundred years ago the high fog had obscured the flaming ball of sun, and the coast of Southern California had been bathed in a haze.

Then came the night, with indication of a drizzle that did not materialize. For the bank of fog suddenly was split as though with a sword, and the brilliant moon poured down, and the riven mist floated away to let the land be blessed with brilliance and the tossing sea dance in the silvery moonbeams.

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adventure · action · swashbuckling · masked hero · California · Spanish colonial · vigilante · heroic · romance · dual identity · sword fighting · justice

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The further Adventures of Zorro is listed on Textopian as a novel by Johnston McCulley, dated 1922 CE.

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