{"product_id":"2940013266001","title":"The Coral Island","description":"CHAPTER ONE.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBEGINNING--MY EARLY LIFE AND CHARACTER--I THIRST FOR ADVENTURE IN\u003cbr\u003eFOREIGN LANDS, AND GO TO SEA.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRoving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of my\u003cbr\u003eheart, the very sunshine of my existence.  In childhood, in boyhood, and\u003cbr\u003ein man's estate I have been a rover; not a mere rambler among the woody\u003cbr\u003eglens and upon the hill-tops of my own native land, but an enthusiastic\u003cbr\u003erover throughout the length and breadth of the wide, wide world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was a wild, black night of howling storm, the night on which I was\u003cbr\u003eborn on the foaming bosom of the broad Atlantic Ocean.  My father was a\u003cbr\u003esea-captain; my grandfather was a sea-captain; my great-grandfather had\u003cbr\u003ebeen a marine.  Nobody could tell positively what occupation _his_\u003cbr\u003efather had followed; but my dear mother used to assert that he had been\u003cbr\u003ea midshipman, whose grandfather, on the mother's side, had been an\u003cbr\u003eadmiral in the Royal Navy.  At any rate, we knew that as far back as our\u003cbr\u003efamily could be traced, it had been intimately connected with the great\u003cbr\u003ewatery waste.  Indeed, this was the case on both sides of the house; for\u003cbr\u003emy mother always went to sea with my father on his long voyages, and so\u003cbr\u003espent the greater part of her life upon the water.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThus it was, I suppose, that I came to inherit a roving disposition.\u003cbr\u003eSoon after I was born, my father, being old, retired from a seafaring\u003cbr\u003elife, purchased a small cottage in a fishing village on the west coast\u003cbr\u003eof England, and settled down to spend the evening of his life on the\u003cbr\u003eshores of that sea which had for so many years been his home.  It was\u003cbr\u003enot long after this that I began to show the roving spirit that dwelt\u003cbr\u003ewithin me.  For some time past my infant legs had been gaining strength,\u003cbr\u003eso that I came to be dissatisfied with rubbing the skin off my chubby\u003cbr\u003eknees by walking on them, and made many attempts to stand up and walk\u003cbr\u003elike a man--all of which attempts, however, resulted in my sitting down\u003cbr\u003eviolently and in sudden surprise.  One day I took advantage of my dear\u003cbr\u003emother's absence to make another effort; and, to my joy, I actually\u003cbr\u003esucceeded in reaching the doorstep, over which I tumbled into a pool of\u003cbr\u003emuddy water that lay before my father's cottage door.  Ah, how vividly I\u003cbr\u003eremember the horror of my poor mother when she found me sweltering in\u003cbr\u003ethe mud amongst a group of cackling ducks, and the tenderness with which\u003cbr\u003eshe stripped off my dripping clothes and washed my dirty little body!\u003cbr\u003eFrom this time forth my rambles became more frequent and, as I grew\u003cbr\u003eolder, more distant, until at last I had wandered far and near on the\u003cbr\u003eshore and in the woods around our humble dwelling, and did not rest\u003cbr\u003econtent until my father bound me apprentice to a coasting-vessel and let\u003cbr\u003eme go to sea.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47121069605104,"sku":"2940013266001","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013266001_p0.jpg?v=1763590272","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013266001","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}