Ebook In the Wake of the War Canoe

This is the record of a wonderful triumph of the Cross. Foremost and throughout it is this. But even for a reader quite indifferent to religion it ought to have an absorbing interest. In the simplest and least pretentious language it records a career of the most romantic adventure. Captain Marryat never recorded such experiences for the delight of schoolboys.

To be landed with one's wife in northern regions from the last ship of the season, among savages, and to be told as the farewell word of civilisation, "You will all be murdered"; to be chased in an open canoe by sea lions and narwhals, into whose dense masses a disobedient sailor had fired; to be chased again by a shark so huge that his dorsal fin overtopped the stern of the canoe, and so menacing that in despair they struck at his head with a pole, and he dived down and left them; to be prostrated with fever, and to have the pagan medicine men whooping and dancing around your bed, conscious that if you die they will be rid of you, and if you live they will claim the cure, these and storms at sea, and the wars of Indian tribes, and conflagrations, and earthquakes make up a fine catalogue of adventures.