Excerpt from The Adventures of My Life, Vol. 2 of 2 The naval department's ignorance, therefore, had the effect of applying to the least guilty - or, to be exact, those who got off with the lightest sentences - a much more rigorous punishment than to the others; because they were deprived of all communication with the outside world, whilst we were within reach of news, and able to enter into negotiations with the captains of any foreign vessels coming into the port of Noumea, should an opportunity of doing so present itself. Knowing just about as little as our official naval men of the topography of the Antipodes, and not exactly understanding what was meant by a fortified place, I imagined myself buried away in a prison built upon a rock, the descent from which would be a most arduous task. Still, as only the dead never return, I accepted my incarceration with a light heart, and with the h0pe of abridging its duration to the best of my ability. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.