Adrift in a Boat
By W. H. G. Kingston
While speaking, they observed the two yachts, which had hitherto been hidden by a point of land, standing out to sea. They had come from the east with a fine northerly smooth water breeze, but the wind had drawn offshore to the east, and as the tide was at flood running up the channel, the vessels had stood offshore to get the full strength of it. This the boys at once understood, but how they should have gone off without them was the puzzle. Matters were growing serious.
Even if David reached the shore, he might not find a boat, and it was a long way he feared from any house where he could get help so that Harry might be lost before he could get back. They retraced their steps to the highest part of the rock and waved and shouted, even though they knew that their voices could not be heard, but the yachts stood on at some distance from each other; it should be remarked, Captain Rymer’s leading. It was evident that they were not seen. The hot tide came rushing in, rising higher and higher. Both the boys became very anxious, David more on his friend’s account than his own.
So many persons have lost their lives much in the same way that it seemed probable the two boys would lose theirs. We must now go back to the picnic party. Mr Sowton and Mr Burnaby, and a few more elderly ladies and gentlemen, began at length to think it time to return home. The hampers were repacked and carried, some up the cliffs by the servants, and others on board the yachts; and Mr Sowton and Billy Burnaby acting, as they said, as whippers-in, began shouting and screeching at the top of their voices.
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W. H. G. Kingston
William Henry Giles Kingston was born in Harley Street, London, on February 28, 1814.
Biography.
He was the eldest son of Lucy Henry Kingston (d.1852) and his wife Frances Sophia Rooke (b.1789), daughter of Sir Giles Rooke, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Kingston’s paternal grandfather, John Kingston (1736–1820), was a Member of Parliament who staunchly supported the Abolition of the Slave Trade despite having a plantation in Demerara. His father, Lucy, entered the wine business in Oporto, and Kingston lived there for many years, making frequent voyages to England and developing a lifelong affection for the sea. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards entered his father’s wine business. However, he soon indulged in his natural bent for writing. His newspaper articles on Portugal were translated into Portuguese.
They assisted in the conclusion of the commercial treaty with Portugal in 1842 when he received an order of Portuguese knighthood and a pension from Donna Maria da Gloria. His first book was The Circassian Chief, a story published in 1844. While living in Oporto, he wrote The Prime Minister, a historical novel based loosely on the life of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, and Lusitanian Sketches, descriptions of travels in Portugal.
Settling in England, he interested himself in the emigration movement, edited The Colonist and The Colonial Magazine and East India Review in 1844, was honorary secretary of a colonization society, wrote Some Suggestions for a System of General Emigration in 1848, lectured on colonization in 1849, published a manual for colonists entitled How to Emigrate in 1850, and visited the western highlands on behalf of the emigration commissioners. He was a zealous volunteer afterwards and worked actively to improve seamen conditions. But from 1850, his chief occupation was writing books for boys or editing boys’ annuals and weekly periodicals.
W. H. G. Kingston
