The Coral Island:
A Tale of the Pacific Ocean

Preface

I was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventuresherein set down. With the memory of my boyish feelingsstrong upon me, I present my book specially to boys, in theearnest hope that they may derive valuable information, muchpleasure, great profit, and unbounded amusement from itspages.

One word more. If there is any boy or man who loves tobe melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindlysympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him toshut my book and put it away. It is not meant for him.

RALPH ROVER

CHAPTER I.

The beginning—My early life and character—I thirstfor adventure in foreign lands and go to sea.

Roving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, thejoy of my heart, the very sunshine of my existence. Inchildhood, in boyhood, and in man’s estate, I have been arover; not a mere rambler among the woody glens and upon thehill-tops of my own native land, but an enthusiastic roverthroughout the length and breadth of the wide wide world.

It was a wild, black night of howling storm, the night inwhich I was born on the foaming bosom of the broad AtlanticOcean. My father was a sea-captain; my grandfather was asea-captain; my great-grandfather had been a marine. Nobodycould tell positively what occupation his father hadfollowed; but my dear mother used to assert that he had been amidshipman, whose grandfather, on the mother’s side, hadbeen an admiral in the royal navy. At anyrate we knew that,as far back as our family could be traced, it had been intimatelyconnected with the great watery waste. Indeed this was thecase on both sides of the house; for my mother always went to seawith my father on his long voyages, and so spent the greater partof her life upon the water.

Thus it was, I suppose, that I came to inherit a rovingdisposition. Soon after I was born, my father, being old,retired from a seafaring life, purchased a small cottage in afishing village on the west coast of England, and settled down tospend the evening of his life on the shores of that sea which hadfor so many years been his home. It was not long after thisthat I began to show the roving spirit that dwelt withinme. For some time past my infant legs had been gainingstrength, so that I ca

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