- And hey, here's another quote from Spenser. The comparison with the Faerie Queene just never gets old for Melville.
- Charles's Isle is near Barrington Isle. And for once, Melville has an actual story to tell, sort of.
- Three cheers for an actual story! Hip, hip, hooray!
- It's not that much of a story, but Shmoop is desperate, and will take what Shmoop can get.
- During Peru's independence struggle from Spain, there was one Creole guy who fought with Peru.
- A Creole is someone who has both European and Indian ancestry, by the by.
- Anyway, the Creole guy fought for Peru for money, but at the end of the revolution, they didn't have money to pay him, so they gave him Charles's Island, which was relatively inhabitable, and quite large.
- The Creole guy determined to rule the island, and brought some settlers over to be his subjects.
- To keep order he brought some large dogs with him.
- Things quickly went to pot, though; the subjects weren't keen on being ruled by the Creole and his dogs, so the Creole guy shot some of them (the subjects, not the dogs.)
- What with the shooting people and the not being many there to begin with, the population wasn't very great.
- So the Creole guy replenished it by inducing people from whalers to abandon their posts, and join his not so very merry band.
- He's sneaky, our hero.
- But the folks who leave the whalers are sneaky too, and eventually there's a revolt and the Creole is driven away, back to Peru in exile.
- He presumably hoped to hear that his island was falling apart without him, and it sort of was.
- The place was completely lawless, and would encourage sailors to leave their ships for freedom when whalers landed.
- So whalers wouldn't land there any more, though deserters in the Encantadas still made their way there.
- That's it. Like Shmoop says, not much of a story, really, but you take what you can get.