Black'erchief Dick

They were alone in the Ship’s kitchen; Hal re-sanded the floor while Anny sat on the window-ledge cleaning a pair of old brass candlesticks. It was four o’clock in the afternoon...

One of the long tables had been pulled out, and round this some ten or twelve men sprawled in more or less comfortable attitudes. Behind these were others sitting on rum kegs or...

Black’erchief Dick stepped out of the open rowboat which had conveyed him from the _Coldlight_ and gave a small white hand to Big French, who assisted him on to the board pathwa...

Blueneck and Habakkuk Coot were below deck in a little bunk-hole which they had fitted up as a sort of wash-house. It was one of Black’erchief Dick’s fads to have his linen alwa...

After his conversation with Black’erchief Dick, Blueneck found leisure to attend to his own amours. He first retired to the brig where, with the help of Habakkuk Coot, he arraye...

It was six o’clock in the morning; and although only a faint grayish light was beginning to steal in the windows and the air was cool and slightly rum-tainted, the kitchen in th...

Everything on the shore was very dark and very silent when Blueneck regained consciousness and sat up. His head ached and his body was stiff and cold while his clothes, still we...

Mistress Amy Pullen, her kirtle hitched up at one side to give her greater freedom in the discharge of her household duties, strode across her small kitchen, an earthenware bowl...

“Oh, I called her Mary Loo, And she shwore that she’d be true, Until I took to rum and went to shea; Then she goed along wi’ he, And forgot all love for me, Sho I stayed wi’ me...

Ten minutes later, Joe Pullen, who stood on the beach watching the _Anny’s_ red lantern swing to and fro in the sharp breeze, was startled by the sudden appearance of Hal at his...

About nine o’clock on the following morning, when the hoar-frost was still on the ragged grass and leafless trees, Anny hurried down the road which led to the Ship. She had been...

Nan Swayle sat in her miserable little cabin with her knees drawn up to her chin; her cat was perched on a rum keg beside her and there was no light save for the cold gleam of s...

Anny spoke timidly and shrank behind one of the high-backed seats in the old Ship’s kitchen as Black’erchief Dick, his eyes dark with anger, raved up and down the room. It was s...

There was silence for a minute or so, and the gulls fishing for eels in the soft black mud came in closer to the shingle-strewn strip of beach, taking no notice of the two figur...

Mat Turnby shifted his large body to a position of greater ease, tilted slightly the rum cask on which he was sitting, and leaned back against the fully rigged mast, balancing h...

Master Francis Myddleton leaned back in his chair and gently stuffed a wad of coarse Virginia into the slightly blackened bowl of his stubby clay pipe, and lifted his gouty foot...

“Anny, are you gone to sleep yet?” Sue sat up in her bed and peered through the darkness to where the other girl lay in a far corner. Her hair was unbound and fell over her coar...

Anny was upstairs preparing herself for Dick’s coming, while in the room below the talk ran high and many conjectures as to the Captain’s intentions were put forward and withdra...

“What’s the matter?” she laughed; they had come to a part where the wall melts into the high-lying fields and the path is very wide, and Hal stepped back a pace or two and turne...

Black’erchief Dick, his eyes flashing and his face showing bright and triumphant in the flickering lantern light, shouted the words over the side of Ben’s boat to a little knot...

Anny stood outside Nan Swayle’s little cabin and knocked at the door. It was early afternoon and the hot sun poured down on the gray purplish saltings, but in spite of the heat...

The same evening Hal Grame and Joe Pullen walked up the Ship lane together in silence. They had just returned from one of their fishing expeditions and Joe carried the catch in...

She and Pet Salt were alone together on the deck of Ben’s old boat. The tide was well up and the waves leaped against the stern with a gurgling sound.

A little more than an hour after Joe Pullen and little Red Farren left the cottage, Mistress Amy sat by the fireside, sewing. The five children were asleep upstairs and everythi...

Nan’s few words had thrown an entirely new light on the situation. Before hearing them she had thought of the future as simply a continuation of her present life. She could hard...

One evening two or three years later, Big French and Sue, his wife, their young daughter, and little Red Farran, whom they had taken to live with them, sat round the fire in the...