Felix Thurstan and Muriel Ellis have set sail on the Australasian, an ocean liner that would take them from Australia to San Francisco. However, one evening, as they stand on deck, a great wave pounds against the ocean liner. Muriel Ellis is thrown overboard and in his gentlemanly way, Felix jumps in after her. Unfortunately, the rescue boat that they sent out cannot find them, and thus are they stranded on a tropical island. Now they must survive living in the wilderness without any signs of modern civilization -- and worse still, on an island inhabited by cannibalistic savages! Grant Allen was a noted author and upholder of the evolution doctrine. His book The Woman Who Did scandalized the population due to the fact that a woman in the novel had a child out of wedlock. He is also known for pioneering Canadian science fiction as well as mystery fiction.

Author Biography

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (1848 - 1899) was a Canadian science writer and novelist and a proponent of the theory of evolution. Allen was born near Kingston, Canada West (known as Ontario after Confederation), the second son of Catharine Ann Grant and the Rev. Joseph Antisell Allen, a Protestant minister from Dublin, Ireland. Allen was educated at home until, at age 13, he and his parents moved to the United States, then to France and finally to the United Kingdom. He was educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham and at Merton College in Oxford, both in the United Kingdom. After graduation, Allen studied in France, taught at Brighton College in 1870-71 and in his mid-twenties became a professor at Queen's College, a black college in Jamaica. Despite his religious father, Allen became an agnostic and a socialist. After leaving his professorship, in 1876 he returned to England, where he turned his talents to writing, gaining a reputation for his essays on science and for literary works.