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The Coral Island:
A Tale of the Pacific Ocean
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BY
ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE,
AUTHOR OF "HUDSON'S BAY; OR, EVERY-DAY LIFE IN THE WILDS OF NORTH
AMERICA;
"SNOW-FLAKES AND SUN-BEAMS; OR, THE YOUNG FUR-TRADERS;"
"UNGAVA: A TALE OF THE ESQUIMAUX," ETC., ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY DALZIEL.
London:
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
1884.
Preface
I 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.