Sea Stories

“The fact was, the farther we got off the land _now_, the worse, seeing that if what I dreaded should prove true, why, we were probably in thirty or forty fathoms of water, wher...

“Suddenly, we began to get into a fearful swell—the Indiaman plunged and shook in every spar left her. I could see nothing ahead, from the wheel, and in the dark; we were gettin...

“Take that lady first,” I said, pointing to Mary, but holding on, as I spoke, to the boat’s mast, for I felt horribly sick and faint, and knew not, indeed, what was going to hap...

We met with nothing remarkable until we were in the latitude of the river La Plata. Here there are violent gales from the southwest called Pamperos, which are very destructive t...

“This is capital!” exclaimed the old general, tottering about with out-stretched hands, ever on the alert for a special roll. “A week of this, captain, will carry us a good way...

It will be observed that this day may be considered as the first in which Jack really made his appearance on board, and it also was on the first day that Jack made known, at the...

I had been on duty on the main-deck. Several ladies had come off early in the morning, friends and relations of the officers. Some of them were either in the ward-room or gun-ro...

A soul—strange to say, one would have thought the cannon also had a soul; but a soul full of hatred and rage. This sightless thing seemed to have eyes. The monster appeared to l...

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded m...

The next navigator round the Cape was Sir Francis Drake, who, on Raleigh’s Expedition, beholding for the first time, from the Isthmus of Darien, the “goodly South Sea,” like a t...

Jack Easy, the hero of Captain Marryat’s story, was “no fool, but a bit of a philosopher.” He had been spoiled by an indulgent mother and a foolish father, who was continually p...

“Ye missed him! Ye missed him!” cried the rival theorist, joyfully. He was mistaken: the smoke cleared, and there was the pirate captain leaning wounded against the mainmast wit...

“We are hemmed in effectually,” said Griffith, dropping the glass from his eye; “and I know not but our wisest course would be to haul in to the land, and, cutting everything li...

Most of us have passed through a period of life during which we have ardently longed to be, if not actually a rover, a buccaneer, or a pirate, at least and really a sailor! To r...

As we had now a long “spell” of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, there can be no better place to describe the duties, regulations, and cust...

And then, of a sudden, I began to comprehend. I had scarce time to think—scarce time to act and save myself. I was on the summit of one swell when the schooner came stooping ove...

With a favorable wind for Havre, we proceeded for that port, where we arrived in about ten days after having sailed from there. The reception I met with at Havre, from my friend...

Our stock of provisions consisted of about one hundred and fifty pounds of bread, twenty-eight gallons of water, twenty pounds of pork, three bottles of wine, and five quarts of...

Two things I did notice on this occasion which I will briefly allude to before closing this chapter. One was the peculiar skin of the whale. It was a bluish-black, and as thin a...

A second form, sharp, elongated, and narrow, issued out of the crevice, like a tongue out of monstrous jaws. It seemed to lick his naked body. Then suddenly stretching out, it b...

“Not the same instant; not the same—no, the doubloon is mine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. _I_ only; none of ye could have raised the white whale first. There she blows! t...

At last, one afternoon, it began to rain, and after the rain came a gale from the eastward. The watchful skipper saw it purple the water to windward, and ordered the topsails to...

“Off here, sir, on our weather bow, and a mortal big field of it; jist sich a chap as nipp’d the Vineyard Lion when she first came in to join us. Sich a fellow as that would tak...

We coasted along the island in the direction in which I conceived the Dutch settlement to lie, and next day, about two o’clock, I came to a grapnel in a small sandy bay, where w...

By the time the oars were handled, and the mate had exchanged places with the harpooner, our friend the enemy had “sounded”; that is, he had gone below for a change of scene, ma...

Stevenson, R. L., born in Edinburgh, 1850; died, 1894; was trained as a lawyer, but soon turned his attention to literature. From his childhood he had written constantly. Among...