Alec coaxes the horse to swim with the lifeboat to the ship. When the horse appears, they argue with Alec about whether to take the Black aboard. Seeing only Alec at first, the men think he is delirious when he tells them there is a great, black stallion who saved his life on the island. Crewmembers in a lifeboat come to investigate the previous night’s fire. In the morning, Alec discovers an Irish cargo ship anchored off the shore. He finds that strong breezes kindled his campfire and caught his shelter on fire. The loud whinnying of the horse wakes Alec one night. They often run the length of the island, as they become companions. The boy and horse gradually come to trust one another to the point that the Black allows the boy onto his back. Alec uses the survival skills he has learned to build a fire for warmth and cooking and to build a shelter from wood washed ashore off the sunken Drake. The island is uninhabited and mostly free of foliage, and Alec and the Black quickly consume every edible form of vegetation. The Black swims for hours, eventually finding safety on a small, uninhabited island.

The Black swims by him, and Alec grabs a rope trailing from his halter. Rising to the surface, Alec sees the Drake sink with no survivors. He opens the horse’s stall and the Black flashes past him and leaps into the ocean, knocking Alec overboard. While waiting for a lifeboat, Alec remembers the Black, trapped in a reinforced pen. Off the coast of Portugal, the Drake is beset by a violent thunderstorm and loses power. Alec is intrigued by the horse, visiting his on-deck stable and leaving him sugar cubes each night. While stopping at an Arabian port, the Drake takes on a very large black stallion that is wild and dangerous. The Drake is bound for England, from where Alec will travel to his home in New York City.

This guide refers to the 2002 Random House paperback edition.Īlec Ramsay boards a ship called the Drake in Bombay, India, after spending the summer with his uncle. Nearing the end of his life, Farley included his son, Stephen, as co-author of his last Black Stallion sequel. Though Farley describes danger, physical injury, and the loss of human life, the narrative does not contain graphic material and is suitable for middle-grade readers.įarley wrote more than 20 Black Stallion and directly derivative titles, greatly expanding the Black’s backstory as well as the stories of his offspring. He began writing the book while still in high school and finished it while in college several years before it was published. The author was raised around horses and kept them throughout his life. Traditionally, the novel has been regarded as a middle-grade novel.

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley