The Pirate (published at the end of 1821 with the date 1822) is one of the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, based roughly on the life of John Gow who features as Captain Cleveland.

The need for research on the northern isles, and other occupations, slowed Scott down, and the first volume was not completed until early August, but his pace then quickened and the work was finished in late October.

Scott was also acquainted with several books on the northern isles from the seventeenth century to his own time which discussed the agricultural questions that occupy Triptolemus Yellowley's attention in the novel.

It is unlikely that Scott was involved with the novel again until March and then August 1830 when he revised the text and provided an introduction and notes for the 'Magnum' edition in which it appeared as Volumes 24 and 25 in May and June 1831.

The arrival of the shipwrecked captain, Cleveland, spoils young Mordaunt's relationship with the Troil girls, and soon a bitter rivalry grows between the two men.

The visitors were amused with the Yellowleys' penurious ways, and encountered Norna, a relative of Magnus Troil who was supposed to be in league with the fairies, and to possess supernatural powers.

The next day a ship was wrecked on the rocky coast, and, at the risk of his life, Mordaunt rescued the captain, Cleveland, as he was cast on the beach clinging to a plank, while Norna prevented his sea-chest from being pillaged.

The captain promised his preserver a trip in a consort ship which he expected would arrive shortly, and went to seek the Udaller's help in recovering some of his other property that had been washed ashore.

After the lapse of several weeks, however, during which the Troils had discontinued their friendly communications with him, Mordaunt heard that the stranger was still their guest, and that they were arranging an entertainment for Saint John's Eve, to which he had not been invited.

Minna and Brenda Troil replied to their discarded companion's greeting with cold civility, and he felt convinced that Captain Cleveland had supplanted him in their esteem.

The bard, Claud Halcro, endeavoured to cheer him with his poetry and reminiscences of "glorious" John Dryden; and, in the course of the evening, Brenda, disguised as a masquer, told him they had heard that he had spoken unkindly of them, but that she did not believe he had done so.

During an attempt to capture a whale the following day, Cleveland saved Mordaunt from drowning, and, being thus released from his obligation to him, intimated that henceforth they were rivals.

The same evening the pedlar brought tidings that a strange ship had arrived at Kirkwall, and Cleveland talked of a trip thither to ascertain whether it was the consort he had been so long expecting.

After the sisters had retired to bed, Norna appeared in their room, and narrated a startling tale of her early life, which led Minna to confess her attachment to the captain, and to elicit Brenda's partiality for Mordaunt.

He announced, in the presence of her father and sister, his intention of starting at once for Kirkwall; but at night he serenaded her, and then, after hearing a struggle and a groan, she saw the shadow of a figure disappearing with another on his shoulders.

Here Cleveland had joined his companions, and, having been chosen captain of the consort ship, he obtained leave from the provost for her to take in stores at Stromness and quit the islands, on condition that he remained as a hostage for the crew's behaviour.

On their way they captured the brig containing the Troils, but Minna and Brenda were sent safely ashore by John Bunce, Cleveland's lieutenant, and escorted by old Halcro to visit a relative.

The lovers met in the cathedral of St Magnus, whence, with Norna's aid, Cleveland escaped to his ship, and the sisters were transferred to the residence of the bard's cousin, where their father joined them, and found Mordaunt in charge of a party of dependents for their protection.

When all was ready for sailing, the captain resolved to see Minna once more, and having sent a note begging her to meet him at the Standing Stones of Stenness at daybreak, he made his way thither.

Norna had warned Cleveland against delaying his departure, and his last hopes were quenched when, from the window of the room in which he and Bunce were confined, they witnessed the arrival of the Halcyon, whose captain she had communicated with, and the capture, after a desperate resistance, of their ship.

The elder Mertoun now sought Norna's aid to save their son, who, he declared, was not Mordaunt, as she imagined, but Cleveland, whom he had trained as a pirate under his own real name of Vaughan, her former lover; and having lost trace of him till now, had come to Jarlshof, with his child by a Spanish wife, to atone for the misdeeds of his youth.

On inquiry it appeared that Cleveland and Bunce had earned their pardon by acts of mercy in their piratical career, and were allowed to enter the king's service.

Minna was further consoled by a penitent letter from her lover; Brenda became Mordaunt's wife; and the aberration of mind, occasioned by remorse at having caused her father's death, having died, Norna abandoned her supernatural pretensions and peculiar habits, and resumed her family name.

1: Some years before the story begins, the mysterious and melancholy Basil Mertoun and his young son Mordaunt arrive in Zetland, where Magnus Troil of Burgh Westra agrees to rent him the deserted Jarlshof castle.

4: Returning to Jarlshof from Burgh Westra in a storm, Mordaunt seeks refuge at Harfra (or Stourburgh) with Triptolemus Yellowley, a factor from Yorkshire devoted to agricultural improvements, and his sister Barbara (Baby).

8: At the house of the parish constable Niel Ronaldson, the sailor introduces himself to Mordaunt as Captain Clement Cleveland and gives him a Spanish fowling-piece.

The factor tells how he is in quest of a cache of coins found at Harfa which were removed by a dwarf, evidently Pacolet, who arrives with a letter from Norna advising Magnus to go with his daughters to the Kirkwall Fair.

He proposes to the Provost of Kirkwall that the ship load up at Stromness, out of the way of an expected government frigate, the Hispaniola, and offers himself as security for the pirates' good conduct.

9 (36): The pirates capture the ship bringing Magnus and his daughters to Kirkwall, and send the sisters ashore with a message to the Provost threatening reprisals if Cleveland is harmed.

Norna becomes a pious Christian, and Minna lives with cheerful resignation after hearing of Cleveland's honourable and gallant death in government service in the Spanish Main.