Coral Island

Three boys, fifteen-year-old Ralph Rover (the narrator), eighteen-year-old Jack Martin and fourteen-year-old Peterkin Gay, are the sole survivors of a shipwreck on the coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island. At first their life on the island is idyllic; food, in the shape of fruits, fish and wild pigs, is plentiful, and using their only possessions; a broken telescope, an iron-bound oar and a small axe, they fashion a shelter and even construct a small boat. Their first contact with other people comes after several months when they observe two large outrigger canoes land on the beach. The two groups are engaged in battle and the three boys intervene to successfully defeat the attacking party, earning the gratitude of the chief Tararo. The Polynesians leave and the three boys are alone once more. Then more unwelcome visitors arrive in the shape of pirates, who make a living trading, or stealing, sandalwood. The three boys conceal themselves in a hidden cave, but Ralph is captured when he sets out to see if the pirates have left, and is taken aboard the pirate schooner. Ralph strikes up an unexpected friendship with one of the pirates, "Bloody Bill", and when they call at an island to trade for more wood he meets Tararo again. On the island he sees all facets of island life, including the popular sport of surfing, as well as the practice of infanticide and cannibalism. Rising tension leads to an attack by the inhabitants on the pirates, leaving only Ralph alive and Bloody Bill mortally wounded. However they manage to make their escape in the schooner. After Bill dies, making a death-bed repentance for his evil life, Ralph manages to sail back to the Coral Island to be re-united with his friends.

Three teenage boys, the sole survivors of a shipwreck, find themselves marooned on a deserted island in the South Pacific. With little more than a telescope and a broken knife, the youths must find food and shelter and learn to survive. But though the coral island is a tropical paradise, full of natural beauty and exotic fruits and wildlife, dangers and adventures abound: sharks, pirates, and even bloodthirsty cannibals! Scottish-born R.M. Ballantyne (1825-1894) wrote more than ninety books for young people during the Victorian era, the most famous of which is The Coral Island (1857), a tale whose popularity has proved so enduring that it has never been out of print. A thrilling story in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe and a key influence on later classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and William Golding's "Lord of the Flies", "The Coral Island" is presented here in a new scholarly edition that includes the unabridged text of the first British edition, a new introduction and notes by Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher, and the original illustrations by the author.

I was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventures herein set down. With the memory of my boyish feelings strong upon me, I present my book specially to boys, in the earnest hope that they may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great profit, and unbounded amusement from its pages. One word more. If there is any boy or man who loves to be melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away. It is not meant for him.

The story opens with a shipwreck on a Pacific island of the young friends Ralph Rover, Jack Martin and Peterkin Gay

"The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean" by R. M. Ballantyne. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.