I know it's a difficult job, but Mother and I have talked it over, ever since you came home with the news, three years ago; so I have made up my mind, and nothing can change me.

You see, I have more chances than most people would have.
Being a boy is all in my favour; and then, you know, I talk the language just as well as English." "Yes, of course that is a pull, and a big one; but it is a desperate undertaking, lad, and I can't say as I see how it is to be done." "I don't see either, Ben, and I don't expect to see until we get out there; but, desperate or not, Mother and I are going to try." Dick Holland, the speaker, was a lad of some fifteen years of age.

His father, who was captain of a fine East Indiaman, had sailed from London when he was nine, and had never returned.

No news had been received of the ship after she touched at the Cape, and it was supposed that she had gone down with all hands; until, nearly three years later, her boatswain, Ben Birket, had entered the East India Company's office, and reported that he himself, and the captain, had been cast ashore on the territories of the Rajah of Coorg; the sole survivors, as far as he knew, of the Hooghley.
After an interview with the Directors, he had gone straight to the house at Shadwell inhabited by Mrs.Holland.She had left there, but had removed to a smaller one a short distance away, where she lived upon the interest of the sum that her husband had invested from his savings, and from a small pension granted to her by the Company.
Mrs.Holland was a half caste, the daughter of an English woman who had married a young rajah.

Her mother's life had been a happy one; but when her daughter had reached the age of sixteen, she died, obtaining on her deathbed the rajah's consent that the girl should be sent to England to be educated, while her son, who was three years younger, should remain with his father.
Over him she had exercised but little influence.