The Rover's Secret

It was a bit puzzling to to work out who or what the Rover was, and what the secret was. The word Rover is not mentioned once in the body-text of the book, and the word secret only three or four times. However, eventually I sussed it out. The Rover is a pirate who figures enough in the book for one to be aware he is there. He is mortally wounded, and in the last chapter he tells his secret before he dies, thus providing an explanation for several other puzzling things that we have been told, or that happened, in the book. On the other hand I was not too happy with the overall style of the book, which is too florid and long-winded. Practically every sentence could be greatly shortened without loss, and it is sometimes an amusing exercise to rest from reading, and then try to re-phrase the current paragraph. Apart from those things, the book is written in a style much like that of Kingston. This is typical of Collingwood, but one sometimes thinks he is a bit plagiaristic. That doesn't st