Excerpt from The Last Voyage of the Donna Isabel: A Romance of the Sea It can all be told in few words: I was persona non gram to the Chilean authorities, with apparently every possible avenue leading forth from the country fully and effectively barred. While personally unknown to those Oflicials most interested in apprehending me, and, consequently, thus far successful in masking my move ments under the guise of a foreign gentleman Of leisure temporarily resident at a fashionable hotel, I never theless discovered it impossible to break through the cordon of watchful government spies, and shake the Chilean dust from off my feet. A rapid explanation will suflice. A native of Massachusetts, of excellent family connections, together with prospects of future wealth, I early developed the unrestrainable propensities of a rover, and after a vain effort to turn my reluctant ambition toward one of the learned professions my par ents, despairing of ever doing better, finally consented to apprentice me to the sea. Unfortunately for the realiza tion of their more secret hopes, I took to that hard, ad venturous life as a duck to water, so that, at the end Of five years' service, I had risen, through the various grades, to the honorable position Of first Officer in the Old Leyland Line, my steamship being the Vulcan, trading between New York and South American ports. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.