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;