There are a lot of Robert E. Howard stories on my blog this month. This story follows a sailor, Steve Costigan, who is unusually eager to get himself into trouble. Unlike many of Howard's heroes, this one is particularly stupid. He is so stupid, it becomes half comic, half adventure story.
He is tricked into thinking that there's a girl who has been kidnapped. So, he goes to rescue her. She fights them tooth and nail. But, at no point does he consider the idea that he's been duped. He believes that he is taking the young woman to her brother.
As he drags her kicking and screaming to the man he believes is her brother, the truth unravels. The man is not her brother. They are in fact competing thieves for a formula believed to be the equivalent of Ambergris. Ambergis is whale vomit which is used for high end perfumes and is incredibly valuable.
So, now that he's aware of having committed a wrong, he does everything he can to fix his mistake. He takes on them all and unkidnaps her. The formula, however, was ripped out of the book she'd hid it in by chance by his partner as a stopper for his bottle of liquor (as the normal stopper was lost). However, upon finishing the bottle, the partner happened across a man who bought it from him for enough money to buy another bottle of booze.
So, while the characteristics of Howard's main character are somewhat changed into a comical idiot, the fearlessness and adherence to a barbaric code of honour remains hard coded into the character's core.
There is definitely some anti-Asian racism in this story. The Chinese characters are referred to as yellow devils. Certainly, the main character thinks nothing about the non-white characters. This is beginning to be a problem for me in how I appreciate Howard as a writer.
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