Robert M. Ballantyne

"Mr. Ballantyne is as lively and vivacious as usual. If the incidents strike us as being somewhat startling and sensational in their character, this will hardly be esteemed a fault with boys, who love about all things a story which has plenty of movement and adventure to it. The subject, moreover, turns entirely upon mission work in the South Sea Islands, the pirate Rosco, who was partly the cause of Leppao becoming a madman, being in the end himself subjugated by the power of the gospel." -The Congregationalist, Volume 12, January, 1883