The Stone Chest Or The Secret Of Cedar Island

by G.A. Henty

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

George Alfred Henty, better known as G.A. Henty, began his storytelling career with his own children. After dinner, he would spend and hour or two in telling them a story that would continue the next day. Some stories took weeks! A friend was present one day and watched the spell-bound reaction of his children suggesting Henty write down his stories so others could enjoy them. He did. Henty wrote approximately 144 books in addition to stories for magazines and was known as "The Prince of Story-Tellers" and "The Boy's Own Historian." One of Mr. Henty's secretaries reported that he would quickly pace back and forth in his study dictating stories as fast as the secretary could record them.

Henty's stories revolve around fictional boy heroes during fascinating periods of history. His heroes are diligent, intelligent, and dedicated to their country and cause in the face, at times, of great peril... Henty's heroes fight wars, sail the seas, discover land, conquer evil empires, prospect for gold, and a host of other exciting adventures. Along the way, they meet famous personages... In short, Henty's heroes live through tumultuous historic eras meeting leaders of that time. Understanding the culture of the time period becomes second nature as well as comparing/contrasting the society of various cultures.

Reviews

[Viva]

Spoilers ahead. I'm going through the free GA Henty Kindle books. This is the 5th one and probably the worst one I've read so far.

The basic story is that Bob's father (ship captain) has been missing for 6 months. He was formerly well to do, owning 4 merchant ships but due to bad luck he's lost almost everything, so he's making one last ditch effort to recover his fortune. And he's doing that by sailing to Alaska to look for gold mines.

Then one day a ship appears in the harbor but is wrecked. Bob jumps in the water to save a sailor. And the sailor happens to be one who sailed with Bob's father. The sailor gives him the news that his father was last seen on an island off the Siberian coast looking for a Stone Chest full of treasure. Before the sailor can say any more he dies from injuries from the sinking.

Bob mentions this to Captain Sumner, who is a rich yacht owner and whose life he also happened to have saved last summer. Sumner immediately proposes to sail there to look for Bob's father and the gold. Bob's mom and Sumner's daughter also go along.

After several incidents they reach the island and immediately happen upon Bob's father as he is about to be ritually killed by the natives. They rescue him and find the treasure as well and live happily every after.

I say worst book because it's simple and the plot is very basic and without verisimilitude. But I guess if you were to read this book to a 5 year old as a bedtime story, it would be ok. And that's the level of reality and realism I'm taking about.

[Tricia]

This must be a children's book. It's short, not at all deep, no character development, and every chapter, it seems, ends on a cliffhanger, from which the characters escape pretty easily (or luckily) in the next chapter. I'd like to see a longer version of this, with more development of the plot and characters.

That said, Laurie Banza's LibriVox recording of this probably saved it for me. She read it with verve. Nicely done, albeit a few minor mispronunciations along the way.