The Coral Island, Robert Michael Ballantyne [inspirational novels .TXT] 📗
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The Coral Island
A Tale of the Pacific Ocean
by R. M. Ballantyne
PrefaceI was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventures herein set
down. With the memory of my boyish feelings strong upon me, I
present my book specially to boys, in the earnest hope that they
may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great profit, and
unbounded amusement from its pages.
One word more. If there is any boy or man who loves to be
melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy
into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my
book and put it away. It is not meant for him.
RALPH ROVER
CHAPTER I.
The beginning - My early life and character - I thirst for
adventure in foreign lands and go to sea.
ROVING has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of
my heart, the very sunshine of my existence. In childhood, in
boyhood, and in man’s estate, I have been a rover; not a mere
rambler among the woody glens and upon the hill-tops of my own
native land, but an enthusiastic rover throughout the length and
breadth of the wide wide world.
It was a wild, black night of howling storm, the night in which I
was born on the foaming bosom of the broad Atlantic Ocean. My
father was a sea-captain; my grandfather was a sea-captain; my
great-grandfather had been a marine. Nobody could tell positively
what occupation HIS father had followed; but my dear mother used to
assert that he had been a midshipman, whose grandfather, on the
mother’s side, had been an admiral in the royal navy. At anyrate
we knew that, as far back as our family could be traced, it had
been intimately connected with the great watery waste. Indeed this
was the case on both sides of the house; for my mother always went
to sea with my father on his long voyages, and so spent the greater
part of her life upon the water.
Thus it was, I suppose, that I came to inherit a roving
disposition. Soon after I was born, my father, being old, retired
from a seafaring life, purchased a small cottage in a fishing
village on the west coast of England, and settled down to spend the
evening of his life on the shores of that sea which had for so many
years been his home. It was not long after this that I began to
show the roving spirit that dwelt within me. For some time past my
infant legs had been gaining strength, so that I came to be
dissatisfied with rubbing the skin off my chubby knees by walking
on them, and made many attempts to stand up and walk like a man;
all of which attempts, however, resulted in my sitting down
violently and in sudden surprise. One day I took advantage of my
dear mother’s absence to make another effort; and, to my joy, I
actually succeeded in reaching the doorstep, over which I tumbled
into a pool of muddy water that lay before my father’s cottage
door. Ah, how vividly I remember the horror of my poor mother when
she found me sweltering in the mud amongst a group of cackling
ducks, and the tenderness with which she stripped off my dripping
clothes and washed my dirty little body! From this time forth my
rambles became more frequent, and, as I grew older, more distant,
until at last I had wandered far and near on the shore and in the
woods around our humble dwelling, and did not rest content until my
father bound me apprentice to a coasting vessel, and let me go to
sea.
For some years I was happy in visiting the sea-ports, and in
coasting along the shores of my native land. My Christian name was
Ralph, and my comrades added to this the name of Rover, in
consequence of the passion which I always evinced for travelling.
Rover was not my real name, but as I never received any other I
came at last to answer to it as naturally as to my proper name;
and, as it is not a bad one, I see no good reason why I should not
introduce myself to the reader as Ralph Rover. My shipmates were
kind, good-natured fellows, and they and I got on very well
together. They did, indeed, very frequently make game of and
banter me, but not unkindly; and I overheard them sometimes saying
that Ralph Rover was a “queer, old-fashioned fellow.” This, I must
confess, surprised me much, and I pondered the saying long, but
could come at no satisfactory conclusion as to that wherein my old-fashionedness lay. It is true I was a quiet lad, and seldom spoke
except when spoken to. Moreover, I never could understand the
jokes of my companions even when they were explained to me: which
dulness in apprehension occasioned me much grief; however, I tried
to make up for it by smiling and looking pleased when I observed
that they were laughing at some witticism which I had failed to
detect. I was also very fond of inquiring into the nature of
things and their causes, and often fell into fits of abstraction
while thus engaged in my mind. But in all this I saw nothing that
did not seem to be exceedingly natural, and could by no means
understand why my comrades should call me “an old-fashioned
fellow.”
Now, while engaged in the coasting trade, I fell in with many
seamen who had travelled to almost every quarter of the globe; and
I freely confess that my heart glowed ardently within me as they
recounted their wild adventures in foreign lands, - the dreadful
storms they had weathered, the appalling dangers they had escaped,
the wonderful creatures they had seen both on the land and in the
sea, and the interesting lands and strange people they had visited.
But of all the places of which they told me, none captivated and
charmed my imagination so much as the Coral Islands of the Southern
Seas. They told me of thousands of beautiful fertile islands that
had been formed by a small creature called the coral insect, where
summer reigned nearly all the year round, - where the trees were
laden with a constant harvest of luxuriant fruit, - where the
climate was almost perpetually delightful, - yet where, strange to
say, men were wild, bloodthirsty savages, excepting in those
favoured isles to which the gospel of our Saviour had been
conveyed. These exciting accounts had so great an effect upon my
mind, that, when I reached the age of fifteen, I resolved to make a
voyage to the South Seas.
I had no little difficulty at first in prevailing on my dear
parents to let me go; but when I urged on my father that he would
never have become a great captain had he remained in the coasting
trade, he saw the truth of what I said, and gave his consent. My
dear mother, seeing that my father had made up his mind, no longer
offered opposition to my wishes. “But oh, Ralph,” she said, on the
day I bade her adieu, “come back soon to us, my dear boy, for we
are getting old now, Ralph, and may not have many years to live.”
I will not take up my reader’s time with a minute account of all
that occurred before I took my final leave of my dear parents.
Suffice it to say, that my father placed me under the charge of an
old mess-mate of his own, a merchant captain, who was on the point
of sailing to the South Seas in his own ship, the Arrow. My mother
gave me her blessing and a small Bible; and her last request was,
that I would never forget to read a chapter every day, and say my
prayers; which I promised, with tears in my eyes, that I would
certainly do.
Soon afterwards I went on board the Arrow, which was a fine large
ship, and set sail for the islands of the Pacific Ocean.
CHAPTER II.
The departure - The sea - My companions - Some account of the
wonderful sights we saw on the great deep - A dreadful storm and a
frightful wreck.
IT was a bright, beautiful, warm day when our ship spread her
canvass to the breeze, and sailed for the regions of the south.
Oh, how my heart bounded with delight as I listened to the merry
chorus of the sailors, while they hauled at the ropes and got in
the anchor! The captain shouted - the men ran to obey - the noble
ship bent over to the breeze, and the shore gradually faded from my
view, while I stood looking on with a kind of feeling that the
whole was a delightful dream.
The first thing that struck me as being different from anything I
had yet seen during my short career on the sea, was the hoisting of
the anchor on deck, and lashing it firmly down with ropes, as if we
had now bid adieu to the land for ever, and would require its
services no more.
“There, lass,” cried a broad-shouldered jack-tar, giving the fluke
of the anchor a hearty slap with his hand after the housing was
completed - “there, lass, take a good nap now, for we shan’t ask
you to kiss the mud again for many a long day to come!”
And so it was. That anchor did not “kiss the mud” for many long
days afterwards; and when at last it did, it was for the last time!
There were a number of boys in the ship, but two of them were my
special favourites. Jack Martin was a tall, strapping, broad-shouldered youth of eighteen, with a handsome, good-humoured, firm
face. He had had a good education, was clever and hearty and lion-like in his actions, but mild and quiet in disposition. Jack was a
general favourite, and had a peculiar fondness for me. My other
companion was Peterkin Gay. He was little, quick, funny, decidedly
mischievous, and about fourteen years old. But Peterkin’s mischief
was almost always harmless, else he could not have been so much
beloved as he was.
“Hallo! youngster,” cried Jack Martin, giving me a slap on the
shoulder, the day I joined the ship, “come below and I’ll show you
your berth. You and I are to be mess-mates, and I think we shall
be good friends, for I like the look o’ you.”
Jack was right. He and I and Peterkin afterwards became the best
and stanchest friends that ever tossed together on the stormy
waves.
I shall say little about the first part of our voyage. We had the
usual amount of rough weather and calm; also we saw many strange
fish rolling in the sea, and I was greatly delighted one day by
seeing a shoal of flying fish dart out of the water and skim
through the air about a foot above the surface. They were pursued
by dolphins, which feed on them, and one flying-fish in its terror
flew over the ship, struck on the rigging, and fell upon the deck.
Its wings were just fins elongated, and we found that they
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