Tales of Foreign Lands: Volume II
Fr. Joseph S Spillmann, SJ was born in Switzerland on April 22, 1842 and ordained in 1874. He was assigned to work on various periodicals due to his literary talents. His Tales of Foreign Lands consisted of 21 stories and have finally been collected into 3 Volumes.
- BK08020
- 332pp. Softcover.
- Description of stories
The Shipwreck: The world of the Irish lad Willy Brown is turned upside-down when his sinister uncle appears on the doorstep to take his schoolmate Joseph, a Chinese orphan, away with him aboard the good ship St. George. The two boys find themselves together on the high sea when the captain plots a perilous scheme to stage a shipwreck. But things gets out of control when a mighty hurricane steers the ship off the coast of the Solomon Islands, driving them to crash upon the reefs of a cannibal-infested island.
Crosses and Crowns.The story opens with a scene from the pages of history: The Emperor Tue-Dueck, a terrible persecutor of Christians, lay dying. The young Christian page, Thuan, is at the Emperor's bedside and tells him how he may yet defeat the dragon tormenting him and obtain eternal life, holding out to him a crucifix. The emperor's rage at the sight of the cross earns the boy a flogging, and soon a new persecution is unleashed. The Christian spirit shines through in all his actions in this mission land where bloody persecution is still a threat to those who hold the faith of Christ.
Prince Arumugam. Having been cured by Father Francis after the native doctors and snake-charmers failed, Arumugam asks of his father, the rajah, to let him go to the missioneries' school. The rajah consents, on condition that the priest not try to convert his son. The priest agrees, and the child Arumugam enters the school. But the progress of Arumugam towards Christianity, and his courage to profess his beliefs in the face of his father's tenacious opposition, is challenged by the rajah's plans to uproot his son's new-found faith by all means fair and foul.
The Pirate's Prisoner. For hundreds of years, Moorish slave owners furrowed the waters of the Mediterranean in search of human prey for the slave markets of Northern Africa. Little Francesco goes down to the water's edge alone to await his father's return from the sea. Instead of meeting his father, lurking pirates carry him off to their ship. The pirate Achmed hopes to induce the boy to become a Muslim and his successor, while the boy's father tries desperately to ransom his beloved son.
