Satan: A Romance of the Bahamas

As Jude came on deck the portmanteau was being hoisted on board. Ratcliffe passed down a five-pound note to the boat’s crew, and then stood, waving to Simmons as the boat put aw...

The boat of the _Juan_ hung for a moment as if in meditation. She made a striking picture, the blue water paling to green under her and the sun-blaze on the red topknots of the...

It was the morning of the third day out, somewhere about four o’clock. The moon had set, and the _Sarah_ was lifting against a gentle head sea, boosting the foam from her bows u...

On deck he stood listening, while the other passed from galvanized wire to the question of spare ring-bolts and other trifles he stood desperately in need of. Like a hypnotized...

Then, through the silence from the far reefs to southward, came the single, lamentable cry of a gull; then a chorus, and away against the vague blue of the east, here and there,...

Ratcliffe had offered to shed Pap’s suit and return in his pajamas as he had come, but Tyler vetoed the idea. The far-seeing Satan, who had snaffled a careen and clean up, not t...

The fantastic fact embodied in those words appeared to him folly only next day at one o’clock, with the sky to northward breathing hot on Havana Harbor like the mouth of a blue...

They watched Skelton getting on board, and then they saw the dinghy lowered and the quarter-boat taking her in tow. In five minutes, like a white duckling behind a moor-hen, she...

Jude turned in first, relieving him somewhere about two in the morning. At six, when Ratcliffe turned out and came on deck, he found Satan at the wheel, relinquished by Jude, an...

The sky was cloudless. The wind of the night before had fallen to a tepid breathing scarcely sufficient to stir the flag at the jackstaff, and from all that world of new-born bl...

That was one of the strangest moments in his life. He had never seen anything comparable to this long white street of sand curbed with emerald waves, leading nowhere, lost, usel...

A week later, toward sundown, the _Sarah_ came up the half-mile channel and dropped her hook in Havana Harbor close to the old anchorage of the _Maine_. A Royal Mail boat passin...

Presently the companionway creaked and a head appeared at the cabin hatch. He said nothing while the whole body emerged, stood erect on the deck, and shaded its eyes toward the...

She had snuggled up beside him for company, and then, regardless of spirit crabs, “hants,” and the possibility of crustaceans landing in shiploads to devour them, had fallen asl...

Was it the indefinable attractive quality that had made her mother a “nacheral calamity” where men were concerned, or just the power of youth? Scarcely the latter. He had met lo...

When they had washed up and put the plates in their rack, Jude commandeered Ratcliffe to help with the dinghy. Satan, having given his orders, had retired into himself and the b...

“Why, I thought you was a man!” said Satan. “You cut and carry on like a man; scratch you and your tongue goes both ends like a woman. Start you on a job, and you sit down to it...

The two boats approached one another, and then hung together, evidently in consultation. Then the oars took the water and they approached the _Sarah_, Sellers leading. Satan, wh...

The amount of food those two put away was a revelation to Ratcliffe, and from start to finish of the meal they never stopped talking. One being silent, the other took up the bal...

Jude made no reply. She turned and went off to the cache, lugged the sacks a bit more away from the opening, and started to put the poles across. When he joined her on the work...

She explained. It was like her to forget and spend the precious time lazing and playing about with “wuzzards.” The sun was taking his plunge into the sea, darkness was upon them...

The ketch carried on, heading straight for the _Sarah_; then, spilling the wind from her sails, she came round, presenting a full view of her dirty old hull and dropping her anc...

It seemed to Ratcliffe in the days that followed that he had never known what work meant before. That he, a wealthy and respected member of the British upper, upper-middle class...

In that vast and gloomy interior the great beams showed like the ribs of some eviscerated monster and the honest light of day fell sick upon the cargo,—a cargo of skulls, ribs,...

He was routed out before dawn by Satan. The cabin lamp was lit, the table spread, and Jude was bringing in coffee. She seemed in a bad temper, and as he huddled himself into his...

The sands, once one got moving on them, were full of interest, strewn along the sea-edge with all sorts of prizes,—colored shells, cuttlefish bones, extraordinary seaweeds, bits...

“Cark’s tried to sell me a pup, that’s how! He’s gone to no Havana: he’s crackin’ on for the wreck with every stitch he can carry. Reckons to bust her open and scoop the boodle...

Satan used a modification of the deck bear for cleaning his decks; that is to say, a box filled with stones having a rough mat nailed under it. The deck having been sprinkled wi...

Jude’s nose did not seem to want any rubbing, nor her face. Descended from generations of crockery worshipers and careful housewives, instinctively hating Cleary, Sellers, Cark,...

The sky from sea-line to sea-line was crusted with stars, a triumphant, cloudless, tropic night-sky beneath which the _Dryad_ rode at her anchor, lifting lazily to the swell flo...

After breakfast, leaving Jude to keep ship, they got the dinghy overboard and rowed for the reef. Here to eastward the landing was made easy by a scrap of beach a hundred yards...

Away to the north two sails cut the sea-line. With the aid of the glasses two vessels leaped into view,—a topsail schooner and a smaller vessel of fore-and-aft rig. Even with th...

He lit a pipe. Having disposed of the fragments of the bottle, he got the mop and a bucket of water and swabbed the rum-stained deck. Then he took his seat forward and watched t...

Ratcliffe helped in the swabbing and polishing. No housekeeper ever exercised more meticulous care in this respect than Satan. He was a fanatic where cleanliness was concerned,...

Ratcliffe, taking his seat on the bottom of the dinghy, watched her as she steered, the old panama on the back of her head and her eyes roving from the binnacle to the luff of t...

Ten minutes later Satan and Ratcliffe boarded the _Juan_. Cleary was already on board, down in the cabin with the others; Cark and a bottle of gin were presiding at one end of t...