Sea Stories Books

CHAPTER I From the first the voyage was going wrong.  Routed out of my hotel on a bitter March morning, I had crossed Baltimore and reached the pier-end precisely on time.  At nine o’clock the tug was to have taken me down the bay and put me on board the Elsinore, and with growing irritation I sat frozen inside my taxicab and waited.  On the seat, outside, the driver and Wada sat hunched in a... more...

Outwards Bound. “How’s her head?” exclaimed Captain Dinks, the moment his genial, rosy, weather-beaten face appeared looming above the top-rail of the companion way that led up to the poop from the saloon below, the bright mellow light of the morning sun reflecting from his deep-tanned visage as if from a mirror, and making it as radiant almost as the orb of day. “West-sou’-west, sorr,”... more...

AN OLD-SCHOOL PILOT. At the mouth of a north-country river a colony of pilots dwelt. The men and women of this colony looked differently and spoke a dialect different from that used by the country people only half a mile off. The names, too, of the pilot community were different from those of the surrounding population. Tully was the most common surname of all, and the great number of people who bore... more...

PART I The first man to climb the Almena's side-ladder from the tug was the shipping-master, and after him came the crew he had shipped. They clustered at the rail, looking around and aloft with muttered profane comments, one to the other, while the shipping-master approached a gray-eyed giant who stood with a shorter but broader man at the poop-deck steps. "Mr. Jackson—the mate here, I... more...

CHAPTER I. “As ye sweep through the deepWhile the stormy winds do blow,While the battle rages loud and long,And the stormy winds do blow.”Campbell. UST two years this very day since poor Jack Mackenzie sailed away from England in the Ocean Pride.” Mr. Richards, of the tough old firm of Griffin, Keane, and Co., Solicitors, London, talked more to himself than to any one within hearing. As he spoke... more...

I Only the young have such moments. I don't mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection. One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness—and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise.... more...

The Star of the North. The sun sank below the horizon that evening in a blaze of ruby and gold. It flooded the whole ocean to the westward, right up to the very zenith, with a wealth of opalescent light that transformed sea and sky alike into a living glory, so grand and glorious was the glowing harmony of kaleidoscopic colouring which lit up the arc of heaven and the wide waste of water beneath,... more...

Lieutenant Jack Rogers at home—His brother Tom resolves to follow in his wake—His old shipmates discussed—Letter from Terence Adair descriptive of his family—Admiral Triton pleads Tom’s cause—The Admiral’s advice to Tom—Leaving home. “Really, Jack, that uniform is excessively becoming. Do oblige us by standing up as if you were on the quarter-deck of your ship and hailing the... more...

A TALL SHIP I CRAB-POTS 1 In moments of crisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance. Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere electricity could never... more...

CHAPTER I The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert.  The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls.  As “every one” was out of town perhaps the... more...