Three Modern Musketeers

 

cover art by A. Leslie Ross

I just acquired a digital reprint of the January 1938 issue of Adventure Novels and Short Stories and, being a huge fan of Dumas' Three Musketeers, was immediately drawn to read Peter B. Kyne's tale "Three Modern Musketeers." 

It's a seafaring tale and, though the three protagonists' personalities don't parallel Athos, Porthos and Aramis, each of them has a distinct personality and they share a fire-forged friendship.

Though the story actually starts with them going their seperate ways. Merchant captain Scraggs, his first mate Gibney and chief engineer McGuffey argue over money and the trio splits up. 

Scraggs suffers some financial setbacks and is forced to lay up his ship. But things look up when he's hired to run guns to Mexican revolutionaries. (The year this story takes place isn't firmly established, but its mentioned that the Panama Canal is still under construction, so it is set during a time of revolutionary violence in Mexico.) This lets him refit his ship. A cargo of rifles, machine guns and a couple of cannon are brought aboard.

During the journey south, stuff happens and both Gibney and McGuffey rejoin Scraggs. A battle against a gunboat is won, though the Maggie (Scraggs' ship) is shot to pieces before the gunboat is captured. After collecting their fee for gunrunning, the trio uses the gunboat as their new ship and recruits the small crew needed to work it. They christen it Maggie II and decide to give a life of smuggling and piracy a try.

Their first venture involves sailing to a Pacific island Gibney knows of, where they will harvest Black Coral (used to make jewelry), though they might have to fight off a native cannibal tribe to do it.

It's at this point in the story that "Three Modern Musketeers" dates itself. The N-word is dropped frequently when referencing the natives and MacGuffey proves to be an unrepentant, hard-core racist. (Though it should be pointed out that Scraggs and Gibney are mildly critical of him because of this.)

They arrive at the island. The natives claim to be reformed from cannibalism and invite the three men ashore for a feast. Scraggs and Gibney attend over MacGuffey's objection. The irony is that MacGuffey's fears that the natives are still cannibals, based purely on his bigotry, prove to be true. Scraggs and Gibney soon find themselves the intended main course and make a last-minute escape only after MacGuffey begins to rake the island with an anti-aircraft gun.

When running across racial stereotypes in a pulp-era story, I'm generally able to recognize this as a function of the time it was written and, if the story is fun and the racism not an important plot point, then I can still enjoy it as a work of fiction. A story can go too far with this--to use a film example, it's pretty much impossible to enjoy the 1915 silent movie Birth of a Nation because the plot is built on racism and the KKK are the good guys. 

For me, "Three Modern Musketeers" nearly crosses this line. MacGuffey's loud and persistant racism during the climax is just annoying and gets at least partially in the way of enjoying what had up to then been a fun adventure story. But I still like the story overall. The well-written action scenes, the irony of MacGuffey being right about the natives for all the wrong reasons, and at least some criticism of his bigotry from the other two protagonists got me to the end of the tale and left me more or less satisfied.

Sadly, as far as I can determine, this is the only published adventure of Scraggs, Gibney and MacGuffey. 

You can judge the story for yourself. It can be found online HERE.