I throughly enjoyed this book. Van Der Post is an extraordinary writer. One who causes me to now and then stop and reread a passage, not because it was so hard to understand but simply because it was so beautifully written. This book focuses on his love of sea travel, from aboard a whaling ship sailing out of Port Natal, South Africa to aboard a cargo ship from that same port to Japan before WWII. The Japan experiences in particular feature later in Van Der Post's life when he was a POW in Java which is also covered in this memoir.