Robin Wright and his cousin Sam get involved in the great adventure that is the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. And in numerous others, too." That marvellous little creature-which, in the southern seas, builds its little cell, works its little day and dies, leaving to succeeding generations of its kind to build their little cells and die, each using its predecessor's mansion as a foundation for its own, until pile on pile forms a mass, and mass on mass makes a mountain-the coral insect, had reared one of its submarine edifices just where the cable-ship Triton had to pass that day. For ages man had traversed that sea without passing exactly over that mountain. ... ... The distance between the mountain summit and the ocean surface had been reduced to feet. The Triton rose on the top of a mighty billow as she reached the fated spot. The coral peak rose near the bottom of the water-hollow beyond, and down on it the doomed ship went with an awful crash! Robert Michael Ballantyne (24 April 1825 - 8 February 1894) was a Scottish author of juvenile fiction who wrote more than 100 books. He was also an accomplished artist, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy.Early lifeBallantyne was born in Edinburgh on 24 April 1825, the ninth of ten children and the youngest son, to Alexander Thomson Ballantyne (1776-1847) and his wife Anne (1786-1855). Alexander was a newspaper editor and printer in the family firm of "Ballantyne & Co" based at Paul's Works on the Canongate, [2] and Robert's uncle James Ballantyne (1772-1833) was the printer for Scottish author Sir Walter Scott.[3] In 1832-33 the family is known to have been living at 20 Fettes Row, in the northern New Town of Edinburgh.[2] A UK-wide banking crisis in 1825 resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business the following year with debts of £130,000, [4] which led to a decline in the family's fortunes.[3]Ballantyne went to Canada aged 16, and spent five years working for the Hudson's Bay Company. He traded with the local Native Americans for furs, which required him to travel by canoe and sleigh to the areas occupied by the modern-day provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, experiences that formed the basis of his novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856).[3] His longing for family and home during that period impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. Ballantyne recalled in his autobiographical Personal Reminiscences in Book Making (1893) that "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired."