During the first days on the island there is little forewarning of this eventual collapse of order. The boys are delighted with the prospect of some real fun before the adults come to fetch them. With innocent enthusiasm they recall the storybook romances they have read and now expect to enjoy in reality. Among these is The Coral Island, Robert Michael Ballantyne’s heavily moralistic idyll of castaway boys, written in 1858 yet still, in our atomic age, a popular adolescent classic in England. In Ballantyne’s tale everything comes off in exemplary style. For Ralph, Jack, and Peterkin (his charming young imperialists), mastery of the natural environment is an elementary exercise in Anglo-Saxon ingenuity.
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