Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston
Copyright © 1981 by Joan Aiken Enterprises
Ltd.
All rights reserved. For information about permission to
reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd.
First American edition published by Delacorte Press, New York
The text of this book is set in 12-point Apollo MT.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Aiken, Joan.
The stolen lake.
Summary: On her way to England from Nantucket
aboard a British man-o'-war, Dido has many adventures
when the ship is diverted to the land of New Cumbria in
the
southern hemisphere.
RNF ISBN 0-618-07020-6 PAP ISBN 0-618-07021-4
[I. Adventure stories] I. Title.
PZ7.A2695St [Fic] 81-5015
Printed in the United States of America
HAD 10 98765432
A NOTE TO THE READER
This book forms part of the series begun in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and continued in Black Hearts in Battersea and Nightbirds on Nantucket. It is set in the reign of King James III, supposing that he had been king of England in the nineteenth century instead of Queen Victoria, and it follows the adventures of Dido Twite after she sets sail for England, at the end of Nightbirds on Nantucket, and before she gets there, in The Cuckoo Tree. But this is a separate story, and you don't need to have read any of the others to understand it.
Everybody knows that the ancient British didn't migrate to South America when the Saxons invaded their country; this is just my idea of what it would have been like if they had. But Brazil did get its name from the old Celtic belief that there was a beautiful magic country called Breasil's Island, Breasail, or Hy Brasil, somewhere out in the Atlantic, west of Ireland, where the sun sets.
—J. A.