Race and Empire in the Stories of R. M. Ballantyne

At the start of Ballantyne’s The Fugitives (1887) three men are running for their lives through the rugged terrain of Madagascar. In order of flight they are ‘a tall agile youth’, ‘a true-blue tar’, and a young negro. The first two are immediately recognisable Ballantyne characters. But initial interest focuses on Ebony, the black cook: when his companions incline to defeatism, he peremptorily rebukes them; it is he who decides on flight rather than face hopeless odds, and he who spies an escape route when the others think they are cornered. The youth, Mark Breezy, has had to flee, along with the others, in order to retain the leadership of the group.2 But this initially tenuous hold on the leadership becomes increasingly evident in the course of the book. In contrast, the resourceful Ebony suffers a sad decline into a stereotyped figure of fun, now also recognisable to experienced readers of Ballantyne. His decline is evident in several ways. His dialect is rendered into comic form. Though courageous, he makes stupid mistakes, as when, during a hunt, he nearly spears the sailor, Hockins, or when he and Hockins blow themselves up after Mark and ordered them to mix some explosive chemicals; Hockins has forgotten to extinguish his pipe, and the two miscreants are told to work all night as a ‘punishment for disobeying orders’

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• Appendix

  Open Access•Dorothy Driver•The Journal of Commonwealth…•1992

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• Spaces of Adventure and Cultural Politics of Masculinity

  Open Access•Richard S Phillips, Richard Phillips•Environment and Planning D…•1995

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