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e Icebergs
V. The Arctic Island
VI. The Madman
VII. A Fearful Fall
VIII. A Remarkable Story
IX. The Volcano Of Ice
X. The Escape Of The "Dart"
XI. Among A Strange Foe
XII. Bob's Discovery
XIII. The Big Polar Bear
XIV. The Finding Of The Stone Chest
XV. Bob Rescues His Father--Conclusion
Publishers' Introduction
George Alfred Henty has been called "The Prince of Story-Tellers." To call him "The Boy's Own Historian" would perhaps be a more appropriate title, for time has proved that he is more than a story-teller; he is a preserver and propagator of history amongst boys.
How Mr. Henty has risen to be worthy of these enviable titles is a story which will doubtless possess some amount of interest for all his readers.
Henty may be said to have begun his preliminary training for his life-work when a boy attending school at Westminster. Even then the germ of his story-telling propensity seems to have evinced itself, for he was always awarded the highest marks in English composition.
From Westminster he went to Cambridge, where he was enrolled as a student at Caius College. It is a decided change of scenery and circumstances from Cambridge to the Crimea, but such was the change which took place in Mr. Henty's career at the age of twenty-one.
An appointment in connection with the commissariat department of the British army, took him from the scenes of student life into the excitement of the Muscovite war.
Previous to this, however, he had written his first novel, which he has characterized as "Very bad, no doubt, and was, of course, never published, but the plot was certainly a good one."
Whilst engaged with his duties at the Crimea he sent home several descriptive letters of the places, people, and circumstances passing under his notice. His father, thinking some of those letters were of more than private interest, took a selection of them to the editor of the Morning Advertiser, w