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 on 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 any rate, 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 seaports, 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 readers' 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 messmate 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.