tand 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.

CHAP