"It was the sheer adventure of going to sea that had made me so eager to leave home."But when the barque Stefano runs aground, sixteen-year-old Miho Baccich's thrilling adventure is over. Although ten of the seventeen-man crew struggle to shore, it is soon clear that their greatest challenge was not surviving the sea. The North West Cape of Australia is barren--plagued by heat and cyclones--and after three desperate months, all but two of the sailors have starved to death. Finally, Miho and another teenager, Ivan Jurich--themselves driven to cannibalism--are rescued by aborigines. They join the tribe in its relentless trek for food and water, until a pearling ship turns toward shore in a storm and discovers the castaways.A year after the wreck, the two returned to Dubrovnik, where they told their story to a Jesuit scholar. Gustave Rathe, Miho Baccich's grandson, first read the account as a boy in 1930. He has sought out other descendants of the principal characters and pinpointed the sites of much of the story. His deft adaptation of the document unlocks an account which rivals Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island in drama and detail, and may surpass them in emotion and insight. Read Less