Category: Historical Novels
We had left Gravesend at four o’clock in the morning, and now, at half-past eight o’clock in the evening, we were off the South Foreland, the ship on a taut bowline heading on a due down Channel course.
The doctor sat on the starboard side of the table, and I caught him eyeing me with a meaning expression that somewhat puzzled me. Once, indeed, he winked, and fearing that he mi...
4. CHAPTER IVBut there came a change at last. Ushant was then many long leagues astern, and the night had been dark but quiet, with a long Biscayan swell brimming to our starboard quarter, a...
14. CHAPTER XIIThe atmosphere now took a deeper tinge of gloom. Thunder had followed the blaze of lightning in the west, low, distant, but continuous, like a rapid succession of the batteries...
5. CHAPTER VWell, all that day the weather held fine and clear; indeed, we might have been on the Madeira parallels; and I said to Mr. Prance that it was enough to make one keep a bright lo...
2. CHAPTER IIMy pipe was out; the quarter-deck bulwarks hid the sea, and so I mounted the poop ladder to take a look round before turning in. Away to port, or _larboard_, as we then called i...
13. CHAPTER XIIt was a Friday morning. On going on deck before breakfast for a pump-bath in the ship’s head, I found as queer a look of weather all about as ever I had witnessed in my life. A...
6. CHAPTER VISpite of Mr. Cocker’s hints as to Captain Keeling’s timidity in the matter of canvas, the old skipper evidently knew what he was about in taking in his flying kites in good time...
15. CHAPTER XIIIIt blew fiercely all that night. A mountainous sea was rolling two hours after the first of the gale, amid which the _Countess Ida_ lay hove-to under a small storm trysail, maki...
1. CHAPTER IWe had left Gravesend at four o’clock in the morning, and now, at half-past eight o’clock in the evening, we were off the South Foreland, the ship on a taut bowline heading on a...
10. CHAPTER IXAt sea, a very little thing goes a very long way, and you will suppose that this incident of the monkeys gave us plenty to talk about and to wonder at. At the dinner table that...
3. CHAPTER IIIIt blew a hard breeze of wind that night. Soon after I had left the deck they furled the mainsail and topgallant-sail, reefed the maintopsail, and tied another reef in the mizze...
11. CHAPTER XThe mystery being at an end, most of the passengers, after a brief spell of loitering and talking, went below, little Saunders leading the way with the meteorolite, and the capt...
16. CHAPTER XIVThe atmosphere was still red with the sunset, though the luminary was below the horizon, and there was plenty of light to see by. An extraordinary shout went up from amongst the...
9. letter I posted to her in India; therefore, I should have to consider‘I don’t quite follow your logic,’ I exclaimed; ‘but no matter. It may be that you want too much in the way of sweethearts. But so far as your secret goes, you can trust me to h...
8. CHAPTER VIIIWe took the north-east trades on the Canary parallels; but they blew a very light breeze, occasionally failing us, indeed, with more than once a positive hint of a shift in the...
12. scene I vividly recall as I sit writing: a tar of manly proportions, alittle way past the forecastle ladder, plain in the view of the poop, his shoes twinkling, his flowing duck breeches trembling, his arms folded, or one hand gracefully arching t...