The Coral Island By Robert Michael Ballantyne

The Coral Island By Robert Michael Ballantyne, Editorial Oneness (Edited by)

A tale of adventure and evangelism, Ballantyne transforms into engaging historical fiction the well-known facts of the Icelandic Saga--stories of exploration and adventure, blessed marriage, alternating turmoil and peace with indigenous people--all sprinkled with delightful and humorous stories of day-to-day life surrounding the first European ground breaking in America. The Norsemen in the West carries readers back nearly a thousand years in time, to the days of Leif Ericsson and the early settlements of the seafaring Norsemen. Journey from the shores of Greenland to earliest-recorded...

Excerpt and crashing against each other and the pier-sides in a most fearful manner. They were the Mary Mac, the Cora, and the Maghee, belonging to Whitstable, and the Lucern of Blyth. Several lifeboats were stationed at that point. They were all launched, manned, and promptly pulled into the Narrows, but the force of the hurricane and seas were such that they could not make headway against them. The powers of man are limited. When there is a will there is not always a way For two hours did these brave men strain at the tough oars in vain; then they unwillingly put about and returned,...

small boats were seen to issue from one of the fiords or firths on the west coast of Norway, and row towards the skerries or low rocky islets that lay about a mile distant from the mainland. Although the morning was young, the sun was already high in the heavens, and brought out in glowing colours the varied characteristics of a mountain scene of unrivalled grandeur. The two shallops moved swiftly towards the islands, their oars shivering the liquid mirror of the sea, and producing almost the only sound that disturbed the universal stillness, for at that early hour Nature herself seemed...

On a certain morning, not very long ago, the sun, according to his ancient and admirable custom, rose at a very early hour, and casting his bright beams far and wide over the Pacific, lighted up the yellow sands and the verdant hills of one of the loveliest of the islands of that mighty sea. It was early morning, as we have said, and there was plenty of life-animal as well as vegetable-to be seen on land and sea, and in the warm, hazy atmosphere. But there were no indications of man's presence in that beautiful scene. The air was perfectly calm, yet the gentle swell of the ocean terminated in...

Martin Rattler was a very bad boy. At least his aunt, Mrs. Dorothy Grumbit, said so; and certainly she ought to have known, if anybody should, for Martin lived with her, and was, as she herself expressed it, -the bane of her existence, -the very torment of her life.- No doubt of it whatever, according to Aunt Dorothy Grumbit's showing, Martin Rattler was -a remarkably bad boy.- It is a curious fact, however, that, although most of the people in the village of Ashford seemed to agree with Mrs. Grumbit in her opinion of Martin, there were very few of them who did not smile cheerfully on the...

R. M. Ballantyne (1825-1894) was a Scottish juvenile fiction writer. Born Robert Michael Ballantyne in Edinburgh, he was part of a famous family of printers and publishers. In 1848 he published his first book, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated. The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island (1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: A Tale of...