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Title: The Wreckers of Sable Island

Author: J. Macdonald Oxley

Release Date: September 12, 2010 [EBook #33714]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WRECKERS OF SABLE ISLAND ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: "So you're not dead after all, my hearty." _Page 37_]

[Illustration: Title page]

THE WRECKERS

OF

SABLE ISLAND

BY

J. MACDONALD OXLEY

_Author of "Up Among the Ice-Floes," "Diamond Rock," &c._

T. NELSON AND SONS

_London, Edinburgh, and New York_

1897

CONTENTS.

I. THE SETTING FORTH
II. IN ROUGH WEATHER
III. THE WRECK
IV. ALONE AMONG STRANGERS
V. ERIC LOOKS ABOUT HIM
VI. BEN HARDEN
VII. A SABLE ISLAND WINTER
VIII. ANXIOUS TIMES
IX. FAREWELL TO SABLE ISLAND
X. RELEASE AND RETRIBUTION

THE WRECKERS OF SABLE ISLAND.

CHAPTER I.

THE SETTING FORTH.

A voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in the year 1799 was not the
every-day affair that it has come to be at the present time. There
were no "ocean greyhounds" then. The passage was a long and trying one
in the clumsy craft of those days, and people looked upon it as a more
serious affair than they now do on a tour round the world.

In the year 1799 few people thought of travelling for mere pleasure.
North, south, east, and west, the men went on missions of discovery, of
conquest, or of commerce; but the women and children abode at home,
save, of course, when they ventured out to seek new homes in that new
world which was drawing so many to its shores.

It was therefore not to be wondered at that the notion of Eric Copeland
going out to his father in far-away Nova Scotia should form the subject
of more than one family council at Oakdene Manor, the beautiful country
seat of the Copeland family, situated in one of the prettiest parts of
Warwickshire.

Eric was the only son of Doctor Copeland, surgeon-in-chief of the
Seventh Fusiliers, the favourite regiment of the Duke of Kent, the
father of Queen Victoria. This regiment formed part of