The story of Philip Marsham who lived in the time of King Charles and was bred a sailor but came home to England after many hazards by sea and land and fought for the King at Newbury and lost a great inheritance and departed for the Barbados in the same ship, by curious chance, in which he had long before adventured with pirates. "The Dark Frigate" is a good story, so good that it could well have been twice as long. If it lacks some of the excitement and spontaneity of Hawes earlier books, it shows the same skill in choosing incident and detail in rapid narration, and in flashing a character in a sentence or two.
