By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War — Inside the Classic

The Schoolboy Frame

The opening chapter establishes Frank Hargate as a boy with a naturalist's eye: he notices a 'little chaffinch nest in the bush, with a newly hatched brood' and a 'small black snake threatening the nest.' His friend's complaint—'I never saw such a fellow as you are, Hargate. Here's the opening match of the season, and you, who are one of our best bats, poking about after birds and snakes'—positions Frank as a dreamer, not a warrior. The cricket match itself is described with technical detail: 'Wilson took James's wicket the first ball,' and Frank is 'noted as a good sturdy sticker.' This schoolboy frame, complete with a chiding friend and a lost game, is a standard Henty device for launching a young hero. The catalog subject does not prepare the reader for this extended domestic scene, which occupies the first chapter entirely.

Sam's Slave Narrative in Dialect

A striking feature of the excerpts is the extended first-person account by Sam, a formerly enslaved Black man, rendered in heavy dialect: 'Some neber look after de slabes, and leabe all to overseers, and dese bery often bad, cruel men.' Sam describes being sold, working on a Missouri plantation, then being hired out as a waiter in a New Orleans saloon. He recounts a gambling scene where a young captain is nearly cheated, and Sam intervenes with a poker and a knife: 'Sam he leap forward like tiger and gibs a shout to warn de captain.' The violence is graphic—'de poker fall on de top ob deir heads'—and Sam is wounded in the shoulder. This narrative, which runs for several paragraphs, is a self-contained story of American slavery and escape, not directly tied to the Ashanti War. Its presence suggests the book may use multiple narrative threads, but the catalog subject omits this significant element.

What the Catalog Omits

The catalog subject 'Ashanti war, 1873-1874 -- Juvenile fiction' implies a focused military adventure, but the excerpts show a book that begins with English school life and includes a lengthy slave narrative. The table of contents lists chapters such as 'A Fishing Excursion,' 'A Mad Dog,' 'A Tough Yarn,' and 'Alone in the World' before reaching 'To the Dark Continent' and later 'The Invasion of Fanti Land.' This structure suggests a gradual transition from domestic to colonial settings, with the Ashanti War appearing only in the latter half. The catalog subject, while accurate for the book's climax, does not reflect the full scope of the narrative. Readers expecting immediate war action will find instead a layered story that first establishes its hero in England and then incorporates a separate American slave narrative, likely as a backstory for a character who later accompanies Frank to Africa.

Readers approaching this book should be aware that the Ashanti War is not the immediate subject. The opening chapters are set in an English school, and a substantial portion of the excerpts is devoted to Sam's first-person account of slavery in the United States. The catalog subject captures only the later, African portion of the plot. This editorial note is based solely on the provided excerpts and metadata; the complete book may contain further material not represented here.

I kept thinking about how that old story opened with cricket and a chaffinch’s nest, then drifted into a soldier’s raw, first-person voice—so different from what the catalog promised. It reminded me of another book I’d read slowly, The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army: A Story of the Great Rebellion — Text and Context, where the quiet everyday details made the war feel unbearably near. That lingering ache stayed with me.