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CHAPTER I.
Some of the "dramatis personæ" introduced—Retrospective glances—Causes of future effects—Our hero's early life at sea—A pirate—A terrible fight and its consequences—Buzzby's helm lashed amidships—A whaling-cruise begun.
Nobody ever caught John Buzzby asleep by any chance whatever. No weasel was ever half so sensitive on that point as he was. Wherever he happened to be (and in the... more...
THE FORWARD.
"To-morrow, at the turn of the tide, the brig Forward, K. Z., captain, Richard Shandon, mate, will clear from New Prince's Docks; destination unknown."
This announcement appeared in the Liverpool Herald of April 5, 1860.
The sailing of a brig is not a matter of great importance for the chief commercial city of England. Who would take notice of it in so great a throng of ships of all sizes and of every country, that dry-docks... more...
AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THOMAS NASH.
It is mainly, no doubt, but I hope not exclusively, an antiquarian interest which attaches to the name of Thomas Nash. It would be absurd to claim for a writer so obscure a very prominent place in the procession of Englishmen of letters. His works proclaim by their extreme rarity the fact that three centuries of readers have existed cheerfully and wholesomely without any acquaintance with their... more...
THE THONG OF POVERTY
"Is it not about time you came to your bed, lassie?"
"Ay, I'll no' be very long now, Geordie. If I had this heel turned, I'll soon finish the sock, and that will be a pair the day. Is the pain in your back worse the nicht, that you are so restless?" and the clicking of the needles ceased as the woman asked the question.
"Oh, I'm no' so bad at all," came the answer. "My back's maybe a wee bit sore; but a body gets tired... more...
CHAPTER I.
The Revolution of 1830, which deprived Charles the Tenth of the throne of France, like all other great and sudden changes, proved the ruin of many individuals, more especially of many ancient families who were attached to the Court, and who would not desert the exiled monarch in his adversity. Among the few who were permitted to share his fortunes was my father, a noble gentleman of Burgundy, who at a former period and during a... more...
CHAPTER I
WHERE WOLVES THRIVE BETTER THAN LAMBS
Vices and virtuesThe sons of mortals bearIn their breasts mingled;No one is so good That no failing attends him,Nor so bad as to be good for nothing. Ha'vama'l (High Song of Odin).
It was back in the tenth century, when the mighty fair-haired warriors of Norway and Sweden and Denmark, whom the people of Southern Europe called the Northmen, were... more...
I ~ THE "STARLIGHT"
As the rising sun had just begun to pierce the misty tropic haze of early dawn, a small, white-painted schooner of ninety or a hundred tons burden was bearing down upon the low, densely-wooded island of Mayou, which lies between the coast of south-east New Guinea and the murderous Solomon Group—the grave of the white man in Melanesia.
The white population of Mayou was not large, for it consisted only of an English... more...
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
I SEE MUCH OF THE INSIDE OF THE WORLD, AND THEN GO RIGHT ROUND IT.
1748. I was not yet Forty years of age, Hale and Stout, Comely enough,—so said Mistress Prue and many other damsels,—with a Military Education, an approved reputation for Valour, and very little else besides. A gentleman at large, with a purse well-nigh as slender as an ell-wand, and as wobegone as a dried eel-skin. But I was never one that wanted... more...
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
OF SUNDRY MY ADVENTURES FROM THE TIME OF MY GOING ABROAD UNTIL MY COMING TO MAN'S ESTATE (WHICH WAS ALL THE ESTATE I HAD).
A Strange Nursing-mother—rather a Stepmother of the Stoniest sort—was this Sir Basil Hopwood, Knight and Alderman of London, that contracted with the Government to take us Transports abroad. Sure there never was a man, on this side the land of Horseleeches, that was so Hungry after money. Yet... more...
PREFACE.
In the last century—and many centuries before the last; but it is about the eighteenth that I am specially speaking—long before steamers and railways, or even frigate-built ships and flying coaches were dreamt of, when an Englishman went abroad, he stopped there. When he came back, if at all, it was, as a rule, grizzled and sunburnt, his native habits all unlearnt, and his native tongue more than half forgotten. Even the... more...