Excerpt from King of the Rocks: A Novel John standish, captain of the finest liner, and commodore of the fleet owned by the largest steamship company trading in the Southern Hemi sphere, was seated one morning in his private room at the Grosvenor, Sydney, an hotel where he was always to be found during the few days his steamer stayed in that port. A knock came to his door; an obsequious waiter entered. 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.