Action Ballantyne, R. M: The Battery and the Boiler. V1. 20 Sep 2010

[crutledge]

R. M. Ballantyne (24 April 1825 – 8 February 1894) was a Scottish juvenile fiction writer.
Born Robert Michael Ballantyne in Edinburgh, he was part of a famous family of printers and publishers. At the age of 16 he went to Canada and was six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He returned to Scotland in 1847, and published his first book the following year, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated.

Excerpt
Somewhere about the middle of this nineteenth century, a baby boy was born on the raging sea in the midst of a howling tempest. That boy was the hero of this tale.
He was cradled in squalls, and nourished in squalor—a week of dirty weather having converted the fore-cabin of the emigrant ship into something like a pig-sty. Appreciating the situation, no doubt, the baby boy began his career with a squall that harmonised with the weather, and, as the steward remarked to the ship’s cook, “continued for to squall straight on end all that day and night without so much as ever takin’ breath!” It is but right to add that the steward was prone to exaggeration.

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