The Forests of the Night the war as it really was, as James Kirkup observed, an "acid portrait of those who played at being members of the [French] Resistance". The novel's theme and title come from the opening lines to William Blake's poem "The Tyger": "Tiger, tiger, burning bright - in the forests of the night." "The Forests of the Night" was translated in 1951 into English by Nora Wydenbruck; it has not been re-printed since. Francis is the son of the Comte de Balansun, whose family resides in the French town of Saint-Clar, near the Pyrenees. Francis, in the beginning of the novel, skips
HMS Tyger and Lieutenant Craig decided to return to Garden Key. Captain Herbert immediately sent a force of seamen and marines to try to capture some of the Spanish boats. The expedition found an abandoned, heavily damaged sloop which they were able to sail back to Garden Key. On 20 February a Spanish half-galley approached the wreck of the "Tyger". The men working on the wreck retreated to shore and the company prepared to defend itself. The Spanish, however, merely scavenged some spars from the wreck to replace their mast and sailed away the next day. Two days later a Spanish sloop