The romance of Captain Duffy

The romance of Captain Duffy by H. De Vere Stacpoole is a South Seas adventure short story written in the early 20th century. Framed as a sailor’s reminiscence, it turns on shipwreck, castaway survival, and a chivalrous, ultimately unfulfilled romance. An unnamed narrator in Malacca listens as Captain Duffy tells how a mutiny on a Canton pig boat left him adrift and marooned on the tiny island of Fovea. Living on fruit and crabs, he builds a hut and shell garden, then wakes to find that a distant nighttime “thunder” was a mail steamer’s explosion, whose lone survivor—a young woman in a ball dress—has washed ashore. Duffy steadies her through shock and amnesia, keeps a scrupulous distance, and covers her with his coat when a shabby trading schooner arrives to rescue them. In Canton, while her delayed family sends word and tailors refit her wardrobe, newspapers turn Duffy into a sensation; he resolves to speak his heart, but when her parents appear with a polished young suitor who greets her with a kiss, he quietly withdraws, ships out, and reflects ruefully that waiting for the “right moment” cost him the only one he had.

The romance of Captain Duffy, by H. De Vere Stacpoole. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77920.