Adventures in Southern Seas A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

untries to explore. The monsters who roamed the earth in ancient times, as their fossil bones attest, are still to be see

parents, ambitious for my advancement, entrusted my education in the arts of reading and writing, accomplishments in little vogue at this time. Hence it comes that I am able to

k Hartog, a famous navigator, who, a year later, invited me to become his secretary and engraver of charts on board the ship "Endraght", being then commissioned for a voyage o

nown as Terra Australis existed in the South, and Portuguese and Spanish ships had made report from time to

becalmed in the tropics, when the air hung like a pall of vapour from the sky, and the pitch boiled and blistered in the seams of the deck-planks. In other seasons we were driven by storm and stress. But at length, in spite of every obstacle, an

which the waves broke in frothy spume. We were all keen to be ashore after so long a spell of t

ve him engrave a plate to be set in some safe place, so that it may be

h him, set off inland, leaving me to my work. The plate was soon

following

1

ber arrived here the

rcargo Gilles Miebas

She set sail again o

econd supercargo; J

s Van Bu, in

ctions given me by the captain, though whether the "Endraght" did sai

hrough a valley, and, kneeling, I was about to quench my thirst when I felt a hand upon my shoulder. Springing to my feet, I was confronted by a band of savages, many of whom held their spears its though about to strike. They were all quite naked, their bodies marked with white streaks. I tried to make them understand I came as a friend, and endeavoured to retrace my steps to the open, where I hoped my shipmates might see me and effect a rescue, but I now perceived that wh

tribe assembled at their camp fires. There must have been several hundred blacks in this camp, and many gathered round to look at me, although the

lrush root, which I found palatable, I was permitted to lie down in one of their gunyahs

e southern skies. The cry of some night bird came from the bush beyond the camp. All else was still, but a crouching form at the entrance to the gunyah warned me I was a prisoner. There was no nee

e at Urk who would miss me more than friends or parents; Anna Holstein, to whom I had plighted my troth, and to whom I looked to be wed on my return. Anna was above me in station as the world goes. Her father was the Governor of Urk, who would not willingly give his daughter in marriage to a poor lad such its I. But who in love is wise? Who reckons worldly wealth when love, the spirit and spring of the universe,