Adrift on the Pacific: A Boys [sic] Story of the Sea and its Perils

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

The barbarian seemed paralyzed. After taking the slight step forward, he paused and stood motionless, staring and transfixed, until his victim was beyond his reach. Then, without a word or exclamation, he turned about, and strode away to where his infuriated and discomfited comrades were watching him with not the slightest doubt he would prevent the escape of the white boy. Within the succeeding hour the Albatross was standing down the bay, with all sail spread; and her long voyage to distant California was begun.

Ah, that journey from the South Seas across the equator and northward into the stern climate of the Temperate Zone!

Not one of those who participated in it can forget it to his dying day. They had many hours of fierce, 262 wild weather, in which the Albatross was more than once in danger, but Captain Hardy was a good sailor, he had a good crew, and he safely rode through it all.

Then came those delightful nights which seem peculiar to the Pacific, when the moonlight takes on a witchery of its own, and the calm sea becomes like an enchanted lake as the vessel glides over it.

Captain Hardy was a kind man as well as a skilful sailor, and, since he received a most liberal price for the passage of the three persons who joined him at Wauparmur, the best treatment was given them.

It was on this homeward voyage that Captain Fred Sanders told to Mate Storms and Inez Hawthorne the story of his life, the main points of which have already been hinted to the reader. He ran away from his home in San Francisco when but a mere boy, scarcely ten years old. He was led into all sorts of evil, and was so deeply implicated in a fierce mutiny that, as we have said, he would have been strung up at the yard-arm, excepting for his extreme youth.

He then joined a trading vessel in the South Seas, but the crew were attacked and massacred by a band of pirates, and he was taken off a prisoner. These pirates belonged to the Wauparmur settlement, and they were so pleased with the bravery displayed by the boy that they adopted him among them. There was something in the life which was attractive to the wild 263 American lad, and he embraced it eagerly, and spent five years among them. His bravery, skill, and natural “smartness,” advanced him rapidly along the line of promotion, until, while yet a boy, he became an acknowledged leader.

Captain Fred spent a portion of his time in the settlement, where he showed his good sense, in one respect at least, by picking up all the education he could from the instructors who were to be found there. He succeeded well––which will explain the intelligence he displayed in this respect while conversing with his friends.

He confessed all this, and said further that his mother died before he ran away, and he had no idea where his father was; but, if he were alive, the son determined to find him, no matter where he might be on the broad earth. Now that his conscience had been awakened, his affection came back with it, and his great fear was that he would not see his parent alive.

It was a source of never-ending wonder to Fred Sanders how it was he could have been so wicked a lad, and how it was that his moral sense could have been so totally eclipsed for years. The gentle, winning words of Inez Hawthorne had first aroused his conscience, until finally it would not allow him to rest until he had made his peace with it.