Publisher's Synopsis
Roving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of my heart, the verysunshine of my existence. In childhood, in boyhood, and in man's estate, I havebeen a rover; not a mere rambler among the woody glens and upon the hill-tops ofmy own native land, but an enthusiastic rover throughout the length and breadth ofthe wide wide world.It was a wild, black night of howling storm, the night in which I was born on thefoaming bosom of the broad Atlantic Ocean. My father was a sea-captain; mygrandfather was a sea-captain; my great-grandfather had been a marine. Nobodycould tell positively what occupation his father had followed; but my dear motherused to assert that he had been a midshipman, whose grandfather, on the mother'sside, had been an admiral in the royal navy. At anyrate we knew that, as far back asour family could be traced, it had been intimately connected with the great waterywaste. Indeed this was the case on both sides of the house; for my mother alwayswent to sea with my father on his long voyages, and so spent the greater part of herlife upon the water.
