"Following the commercial and critical success of his first book, Typee, Herman Melville continued his series of South Seas adventure-romances with Omoo. Melville's second book chronicles the narrator's involvement in a mutiny aboard a South Seas whaling vessel, his incarceration in a Tahitian jail, and then his wanderings as an omoo, or rover, on the island of Eimeo (Moorea). Based on Melville's personal experience as a sailor on a South Pacific whaleship, Omoo is a first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century, filled with colorful characters and detailed descriptions of the far-flung locales of Polynesia."--BOOK JACKET.
Being a Seaman in the 19th-Century "Dashing forever against their coral rampart, the breakers looked in the distance, like a line of rearing white chargers reined in, tossing their white manes, and bridling with foam." - Herman Melville, Omoo Omoo is basically a fiction-driven adventure novel based on Herman Melville’s South Pacific seamanship experience. The novel is a sequel to Typee; this time, the action is set on the remote islands of Tahiti and includes mutiny, recruiting new members, facing cannibalistic local tribes and handling the mutineers. How will the story end? Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes
IT WAS the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that broke the broad expanse of the ocean. On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. The four boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her a whaler. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman's complexion in the tropics. On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a broad- brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we advanced. When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes. And well they might. To say nothing of the savage boat's crew, panting with excitement, all gesture and vociferation, my own appearance was calculated to excite curiosity. A robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders, my hair and beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my recent adventure. Immediately on gaining the deck, they beset me on all sides with questions, the half of which I could not answer, so incessantly were they put. As an instance of the curious coincidences which often befall the sailor, I must here mention that two countenances before me were familiar. One was that of an old man- of-war's-man, whose acquaintance I had made in Rio de Janeiro, at which place touched the ship in which I sailed from home. The other was a young man whom, four years previous, I had frequently met in a sailor boarding-house in Liverpool. I remembered parting with him at Prince's Dock Gates, in the midst of a swarm of police-officers, trackmen, stevedores, beggars, and the like. And here we were again: -years had rolled by, many a league of ocean had been traversed, and we were thrown together under circumstances which almost made me doubt my own existence. But a few moments passed ere I was sent for into the cabin by the captain
Herman Melville (1819 – 1891) was an American poet and novelist of the American Renaissance, best known for his allusive adventure story “Moby-Dick.” Being the direct sequel to the fi rst Melville’s work “Typee,” “Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas” tells us about the author’s exciting adventures in the South Pacifi c, embellished and adapted into a thrilling travel story. The book considered a classic of the adventure genre and one of the most signifi cant travel stories of that time.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas" by Herman Melville. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
IT WAS the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail aback about a league from the land, and was the only object that broke the broad expanse of the ocean. On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. The four boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her a whaler. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman's complexion in the tropics. On the quarter-deck was one whom I took for the chief mate. He wore a broad- brimmed Panama hat, and his spy-glass was levelled as we advanced. When we came alongside, a low cry ran fore and aft the deck, and everybody gazed at us with inquiring eyes. And well they might. To say nothing of the savage boat's crew, panting with excitement, all gesture and vociferation, my own appearance was calculated to excite curiosity. A robe of the native cloth was thrown over my shoulders, my hair and beard were uncut, and I betrayed other evidences of my recent adventure. Immediately on gaining the deck, they beset me on all sides with questions, the half of which I could not answer, so incessantly were they put. As an instance of the curious coincidences which often befall the sailor, I must here mention that two countenances before me were familiar. One was that of an old man- of-war's-man, whose acquaintance I had made in Rio de Janeiro, at which place touched the ship in which I sailed from home. The other was a young man whom, four years previous, I had frequently met in a sailor boarding-house in Liverpool. I remembered parting with him at Prince's Dock Gates, in the midst of a swarm of police-officers, trackmen, stevedores, beggars, and the like. And here we were again: -years had rolled by, many a league of ocean had been traversed, and we were thrown together under circumstances which almost made me doubt my own existence. But a few moments passed ere I was sent for into the cabin by the captain
Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas is the second book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1847, and a sequel to his first South Sea narrative Typee, also based on the author's experiences in the South Pacific.
On approaching, she turned out to be a small, slatternly-looking craft, her hull and spars a dingy black, rigging all slack and bleached nearly white, and everything denoting an ill state of affairs aboard. The four boats hanging from her sides proclaimed her a whaler. Leaning carelessly over the bulwarks were the sailors, wild, haggard-looking fellows in Scotch caps and faded blue frocks; some of them with cheeks of a mottled bronze, to which sickness soon changes the rich berry-brown of a seaman’s complexion in the tropics...FROME THE BOOKS.
Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, Omoo chronicles the tumultuous events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel and is based on Melville's personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. From recruiting among the natives for sailors to handling deserters and even mutiny, Melville gives a first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century filled with colourful characters and vivid descriptions of the far-flung locales of Polynesia.
