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Face au drapeau (book)

Ker Karraje

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Ker Karraje

Reconstruction by Eugene Ipavec, 13 august 2005, based on the text

The book describes the flag of the pirate Ker Karraje, as he, in the guise of the Count d’Artigas, sails the schooner "Ebba" along the U.S. Atlantic coast.

From the Project Guttenberg file of the text:

The schooner sped gracefully over the calm waters of the sound, her flag--a gold crescent in the angle of a red field--streaming proudly in the breeze.

I assumed that "angle" is here meant to mean "hoist." We do not know the orientation of the crescent, so the reconstruction is more than a little speculative.
Eugene Ipavec, 13 august 2005

The original book was published as "Face au drapeau" in 1896. As expected, a big French national flag is shown on the cover of the Hetzel edition. See for instance here.

The novel was translated into English in 1897 and published under three different titles: Facing the Flag (first US edition), For the Flag (first English edition) and Simon Hart: a Strange Story of Science & the Sea. Andrew Nash shows on his website several covers of the early editions of the book, which, surprisingly, do not picture a flag! The only exception is the Tennyson Neely's edition (Facing the Flag, 1899), which shows nasty Ker Karraje in his futurist boat flying a pirate flag (black flag with white skull and bones).
Ivan Sache, 17 august 2005