Here is an excerpt from the foreword:
And, for that matter, many of the best stories in this book resemble it in that particular. Their 'Sea-light is evasive and strange. It Should be sufficient for us that Miss D'Oyley has done as, much as was possible, I think, in her selection from the great sea-Stories of the world, to show how the sea has moved the wonder of men, and has troubled their minds, with surmises which went beyond the edge of the earth. These men ventured mostly for fish or cargoes, or to fight over the right to collect them-there is a deplorable amount of fighting in this volume-but they brought to light also, and usually without knowing it, a treasure which is greater than the victory of Lepanto or the doubling of Cape Horn. In this book you will find here and there indications to further and fuller reading which might profitably occupy the curious for a long spell. It ought not to be news to us, though perhaps it is, that one of the most direct and nervous narratives of sea travel in English is to be found in the Acts of the Apostles. And if a reader does not want more of Beowulf,' Malory, and Hakluyt, than he finds herein, then the purpose of thi's book is frustrate. To most of us, probably the Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James, told by Himself, will be a surprise. Even now we -do not know the name of his ship. James does not give it; we know only that she was Bristol built. James was a seventeenth-century master-mariner who deserves a place in Valhalla. His story should be -read in full, and I imagine the long extracts from it, to be found here, will send readers to it. His ship was the first to winter in Hudson's Bay, by Charlton Island which he named. Her men scuttled her, to save her from the ice, and she rested on the bottom all the winter. When spring broke they raised her.. It was not done as easily as that, as you may suppose. We are surprised that James and his men managed to survive their privations;. but James was a great seaman and a first-rate leader. And now note this : they raised their ship, and got her going again in a forbidding and unknown sea, yet instead of heading for Bristol they endeavoured to make west, for their object had been the North-West Passage. A reader, it is almost certain, will want more of Captain James. Nor should that reader imagine that he has sighte Moby Dick because something of that portentous whale's bulk is suggested in a page or two, in this collection. The virtue of that great book of the sea-I think, the greatest in our languagealtogether escapes. an extract. One cannot see Mount Everest, becausean enthusiastic climber, who has essayed its - glacial steeps, ha$ presented' us with a nice fragment of its substance-for an interesting paper-weight. An extract or a quotation has no value unless, as did Ali Baba, we know, what Open Sesame will do for us.
| Price | $5.00 |
|---|---|
| Shipping & Handling | $3.00 |
| Total | $8.00 |
