Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs

The story takes off when Billy Byrne is fingered for a murder he didn't commit causing him to go on the lam, fleeing to San Francisco just steps ahead of the law. At a local dive he tries to get a couple of sailors drunk so he can roll them but the tables are turned when he is slipped a mickey and finds himself shanghaied aboard The Halfmoon, a ship crewed by not the nicest people in the world. There are those aboard The Halfmoon who have a darker mission and that is to kidnap a millionaire's daughter, the beautiful socialite Barbara Harding, and either ransom her or trick her into marriage. Billy has no moral dilemma when it comes to this sort of activity and he'd sooner push in the face of a pretty socialite than kiss it, but when Miss Harding courageously stands up to Billy, calling him a coward and a mucker, he starts to see her and himself in a different light.