Colymbia. Robert Ellis Dudgeon

      A VOYAGE AND ITS END

       Table of Contents

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      CHAPTER I.

      A VOYAGE AND ITS END.

      MY father, the Rev. Athanasius Smith, was the incumbent of a rectory on the east coast of England. Besides the income he derived from this post, he had a moderate patrimony, which enabled him to live comfortably, and to give his children, two boys, a good education. My name is De Courcy, that of my brother Howard. Smith, in spite of the many noble and illustrious persons of that name, is considered rather a plebeian appellation; so the Smiths are much addicted to bestowing aristocratic christian names on their children, in order to neutralize the supposed vulgarity of the patronymic. My father was not exempt from this weakness; hence our high-sounding names.

      We were sent as day-boarders to a large endowed school not far from the rectory, where the usual excellent education of such establishments, consisting chiefly of much Latin and Greek, and a little French, writing and arithmetic, was duly taught, and great attention was paid to the religion and morals of the school boys. English grammar and composition were, as in most public schools, much neglected, which will account for the defects that may be visible in my style; ​but it was never supposed that I should one day become an author, nor should I have ever thought of writing a book, had it not been that I am in a manner forced to do so by the strangeness of the adventures that have fallen to my lot. This digression was required to justify my appearance as an author and to excuse my unpolished style. The truthfulness of my narrative will, I hope, compensate for the absence of the graces of composition.

      The boys of our school supplemented their mental education by a physical one, in which they learned thoroughly the games of cricket, racquets, football, and became adepts in running, leaping, rowing, swimming, and all other manly and athletic exercises. The vicinity of the sea and a long reef of rocks extending far out from the shore beyond low water, which enabled us to get readily into deep water at every state of the tide, gave us opportunities for practising swimming which were taken advantage of by the boys, so that our school was renowned for its excellent swimmers and Carried off all the first prizes at the swimming competitions with other schools.

      I was the elder of the two children of my father by about two years, and I excelled my less robust brother as much in athletic sports as he surpassed me in a knowledge of Greek and Latin. However, my progress in my intellectual studies was not conspicuously bad, only I greatly preferred perfecting my bodily frame to cultivating my mental faculties. My brother, on the other hand, though much inferior to me in muscular strength, was a diligent student and cut a very good figure at the annual examinations.

      My father was a man of cultivated tastes, a good classical scholar, and a strict disciplinarian. He took ​care that we should be well instructed in religion, and devoted much time to making us thoroughly acquainted with the social state and political constitution of our country.

      Under his tuition I acquired a great respect for all the existing institutions of Britain, and I gained a profound conviction that this country was much superior to any country of ancient or modern times in both its political and social aspects. I was thoroughly persuaded that a limited Monarchy, supported by a hereditary House of Peers, and a House of Commons elected by the free and independent votes of a virtuous people, was the perfection of forms of government. I admired the glorious union of Church and State, fraught with so much benefit to both parties, and I was fervently thankful that I had been born an Englishman.

      My father's means did not allow him to send both of us to Oxford; and as my brother's superior aptitude for study plainly indicated that a university education would be more profitably bestowed on him than on me, I not unwillingly consented that he should be brought up for the Church, while I looked about for some mode of life more adapted, to my capacity.

      Though I cordially ceded to my brother any claim I might be thought to possess, as the elder of the two, to a university education, I envied him the possession of those natural abilities which enabled him to study for the Church, than which I could not conceive a more glorious calling. However, as nature had denied me the qualities of mind necessary to the aspirant for a place in the ecclesiastical establishment of my beloved country, it was resolved, after much careful consideration, to send me to push my fortune in one ​of our colonial possessions. My father considered me eminently fitted for such a career, as I was at once enterprizing and persevering, and, being blessed with a robust constitution and a splendid muscular

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