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The Castaways of Disappointment Island

Author's Note

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Author's Note.

This is a true story—I want you to remember that. There are lots of splendid stories, but then they are only stories. Even our dear old Robinson Crusoe did not really live, though his adventures are based upon the sufferings of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez. But this is true all through, and everything is told just as it really happened.

If the readers of this history will take their maps and look down below New Zealand, they will see, providing that the map is a good one, a tiny spot about the size of a pin's point marked "Auckland Isles"; and if they look in a gazetteer they may learn that these islands are uninhabited and volcanic. Those islands are the scene of this story.

On the map they are marked by one tiny dot, but in reality there are nine or ten islands. First there is Auckland Island proper, the largest of the group, about twenty-four miles long, and fifteen across its widest part. Then there are Adams Isle, Enderby Isle, Ewing Isle, and four or five small ones; and, lastly, all by itself, on the western side, there is Disappointment Island. That is its proper page breakname, and when you have read this story through, I think you will agree that a better name could not possibly have been found for so dreary and terrible a spot.

Now, with this explanation, I will tell you Mr. Charles Eyre's story just as he told it to me.