CLOUD OF ISLANDS: By Sail to the South Seas by W.I. B. Crealock - 1955-01-01

Hastings House, 1955-01-01. Hardcover. Good/Acceptable. Hastings House [Published Date: 1955]. Hardcover, 254 pp. No other printings listed. Good in acceptable dust jacket. Orange cloth covered boards black lettering on spine. Light bumping, scuffing and soiling to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages lightly aged but otherwise unmarked. Dust jacket has a 3" tear to the paper over the top edge of the spine and several other smaller chips and tears and creasing along edges. Light to moderate overall scuffing, aging and soiling to jacket as well. NOT price clipped. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Black and white illustrations and photo reproductions. [From jacket flaps] With a few dollars in your pocket and a well-found sailing craft underfoot, you can if your love of adventure is great enough, muse across the oceans of the world. Bill Crealock did just that when he set out a few years ago from England, for South America and the Caribbean - described so delightfully in his Vagabonding Under Sail. And here is another fascinating record of adventuring in a small boat in distant seas. The Arthur Rogers was a husky 70 foot ketch with a 16 foot beam and 8 foot draught. The reader can join its crew of four to pass through the great turnstile of the Pacific, the Panama Canal, and to battle twice through the doldrums to explore the barren and little-known Galapagos Islands - haunt of iguanas, giant tortoises and other strange fauna. From the Galapagos they sailed through 3,000 miles of ocean to wander among the seldom-visited islands of the South Seas. They paused at lovely Mangareva, and then lingered among the "fairy lands forlorn" of the Marquesas, visiting en route Melville's beautiful Typee. In one of the coral atolls of the dangerous Tuamotus they were adopted and christened by the natives, and in another were trapped and nearly wrecked. And in this "cloud of islands," they came at length to Tahiti. But this book is not a prosaic log of island-hopping. Mr. Crealock has a keen eye for the oddities and humors of the native scene, a warm gift for inspiring confidence and friendship, and a vivid talent for descriptions of fabulous sea- and landscapes. The reader is given a clear insight into the primitive life and economy of the islanders, and the way the white man's civilization affected them. The story is told with charming, humorous vivacity. Yet where occasion calls for it, as when he tells of arriving at dawn at a little island brooded over by a great, club-crested peak, or describes the passionate intricacies of the real hula, Mr. Crealock has an extraordinary gift for poetic word painting. Cloud of Islands is an enthralling record of a voyage into strange, exotic seas - a voyage which everyone with a yearning for adventure, romance, and the sea will want to take with the author.