Albert Richard Wetjen was a prolific author of mostly nautical and South Seas adventure yarns for the pulps. Several different series characters appeared in his stories, including the wonderfully named Shark Gotch and Typhoon Bradley. “Terror Island”, in the October 1938 issue of ACTION STORIES, introduces another Wetjen series character, Stinger Seave, the ultrahardboiled skipper of a trading ship in the South Seas.
In “Terror Island”, Seave, his first mate Big Bill Gunther, and the rest of the
crew have put ashore in a cove at an isolated island to scrape barnacles off
the hull and make other repairs. While they’re there, two more ships show up,
one in pursuit of the other, and in one of those coincidences that drive the
plots of so many pulp stories, the two people on the ship being chased are
known to Seave, and they bring up dark, tragic memories from his past when they
beg for his help against their ruthless pursuers.
Coincidence or not, Wetjen makes the plot work just fine, and he also throws in
one angle that makes this story really stand out from the usual pulp adventure
fare. He sets up a dilemma that isn’t really resolved in this story, and that
makes me eager to read the other five stories in this series, to see whether or
not he can pull off this unique twist. The Stinger Seave series has never been
collected, as far as I know, but all six stories are available at various places
on line. If you’re a pulp adventure fan, you should give “Terror Island” a try
and see if you enjoy it as much as I did. You can find it here, along with
hundreds of other pulp stories.
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