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Fast In The Ice: Adventures In The Polar Regions
About the Book
The novel, Fast in the Ice written by R.M. Ballantyne has a story of much hearty cheer given as the brig left Old England for the Polar Seas. Many a tearful eye gazed that day as she steered her course into the unknown regions of the far north. But she was never welcomed back with a cheer, and no one ever looked up to see her sails heading toward land as they rose on the distant horizon. The captain of the brig Harvey was a tall, strong man, with short, curly black hair and stern black eyes. The narrator refers to Frome as "the yank of a chain" and depicts him as "the most stunning figure in Starkfield," "the ruin of a man," and with a "careless powerful look, in spite of a lameness stopping each movement." The narrator seeks to discover more about him out of curiosity. He learns that Frome's limp resulted from an injury sustained in a "smash-up" twenty-four years earlier, but further information is withheld. The narrator also learns little else from Frome's neighbors, aside from the fact that Ethan's attempt at higher education decades earlier was derailed by his father's sudden illness following an injury, which forced him to return to the farm to help his parents and never leave again.
R. M. Ballantyne was a Scottish writer of young adult literature who produced more than a hundred books between 24 April 1825 and 8 February 1894. He was also a skilled artist; some of his watercolors were on display at the Royal Scottish Academy. The ninth of ten children and youngest son of Alexander Thomson Ballantyne (1776-1847) and his wife Anne, Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh on April 24, 1825. (1786-1855). Robert's uncle James Ballantyne (1772-1833) was Sir Walter Scott's printer, and Alexander worked as a newspaper editor and printer in the family business "Ballantyne & Co" based at Paul's Works on the Canongate. The family is documented to have resided at 20 Fettes Row in Edinburgh's northern New Town in 1832-1833. The Ballantyne printing company collapsed the next year with debts of £130,000 as a result of a UK-wide banking crisis, which caused a decrease in the family's finances. Ballantyne moved to Canada at the age of 16 and worked for the Hudson's Bay Company for five years. He traveled by canoe and sleigh to the regions that are now the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec to trade with the local First Nations and Native Americans for furs; these experiences served as the inspiration for his book The Young Fur Traders.
