The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers — Robert Michael Ballantyne / R.M. Ballantyne

A ''rest of the story'' account of the famous HMS Bounty mutineers who parted ways with Captain Bligh and company, The Lonely Island follows the mutineers to a remote, uninhabited island where they hope to finish their days in peace and quiet. For more than twenty years they remained undiscovered on Pitcairn s Island, far off the beaten sailing routes of ships at sea.

The Lonely Island, accordingly to Ballantyne, ''...is essentially a true story, the merest spider-web of fiction having been employed to bind it together.'' Readers of this tale discover how men without a reliance and faith in Jesus Christ, left to their own devices, will not experience peace and success. But, when God chooses to work in mans hearts, the change is remarkable.

''So the good seed sown under such peculiar circumstances at the beginning of the century continues to grow and spread and flourish, bringing forth fruit to the glory of God. Thus He causes light to spring out of darkness, good to arise out of evil, and The Lonely Island, once an almost unknown rock in the Pacific Ocean, was made a center of blessed Christian influence soon after the time when it became the refuge of the mutineers.''

-- R. M. Ballantyne