Importing S-Plus data sets into R

Dear All

I apologise for such a simplistic question.  However I am having immense trouble getting my S-Plus data set into R.  I have attempted data.dump/data.restore though I am unable to get it to work for me.  The error I am getting in R is :
Error in seek(s) : no applicable method for "seek"

Is this the best way to import S-Plus datasets or is there another suggestion that I could try?  My data set is 284 variables with 1461rows.

Thank-you for your help in advance,

Trudi