The Project Gutenberg EBook of The First Mate, by Harry Collingwood

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Title: The First Mate
The Story of a Strange Cruise

Author: Harry Collingwood

Illustrator: E.S. Hodgson

Release Date: June 17, 2008 [EBook #25818]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIRST MATE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The First Mate, by Harry Collingwood.

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The hero of this story is Walter Leigh, who takes a job as second mate
aboard a gasoline-powered yacht owned by a Mrs Vansittart, whose
husband is an American industrialist. Julius Vansittart is a rather
nasty 12-year-old, who, despite his life being saved by Leigh, when he
had fallen overboard, hates the English, and never misses an opportunity
of being as unpleasant as possible, even to the point of stupidity.

There are numerous disasters in this story, with the First Mate's death
occurring soon after the start of the book, and Leigh's promotion to the
position. After that there are an attack by pirates, a shipwreck, an
attack by hostile natives, all of which Leigh does his best to cope
with. Eventually even the dreadful Julius becomes a bit more civilised,
and apologises for his bad behaviour hitherto.

They drop a large number of floating messages asking for help, into the
sea, and eventually they are rescued. This is not a very long book,
taking only 8.5 hours to read as an audiobook.

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THE FIRST MATE, BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE "STELLA MARIS" AND MRS VANSITTART.

"Well, young man, what do you think of her?"

The question was addressed to me in a very pleasantly modulated female
voice, carrying just the slightest suspicion of an American accent. For
the fraction of a second I was a wee bit startled. I had not had the
ghost of a suspicion that anyone was nearer me than the gang of
labourers who were busily engaged in unloading a big delivery wagon and
transferring the contents, in the shape of numerous packing cases, to
the deck of the vessel which I was