Project Gutenberg's Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories, by Louis Becke

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Title: Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories
1898

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: March 15, 2008 [EBook #24836]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RODMAN AND OTHERS ***

Produced by David Widger

RODMAN THE BOATSTEERER AND OTHER STORIES

By Louis Becke

London T. Fisher Unwin, 1898

CONTENTS:

RODMAN THE BOATSTEERER

A POINT OF THEOLOGY ON MADURO

A MAN OF IMPULSE

THE TRADER

MRS. CLINTON

THE CUTTING-OFF OF THE "QUEEN CHARLOTTE"

THE PERUVIAN SLAVERS

A QUESTION OF PRECEDENCE

A TOUCH OF THE TAR-BRUSH

THE TRADER S WIFE

NINA

THE EAST INDIAN COUSIN

PROCTOR THE DRUNKARD

A PONAPEAN CONVENANCE

IN THE KING'S SERVICE, EPISODES OF A BEACH-COMBER

OXLEY, THE PRIVATEERSMAN

THE ESCAPEE

EMA, THE HALF-BLOOD

LEASSE

THE TROUBLE WITH JINABAN

RODMAN THE BOATSTEERER

I.

With her white cotton canvas swelling gently out and then softly
drooping flat against her cordage, the _Shawnee_, sperm whaler of New
Bedford, with the dying breath of the south-east trade, was sailing
lazily over a sea whose waters were as calm as those of a mountain lake.
Twenty miles astern the lofty peaks of Tutuila, one of the islands
of the Samoan group, stood out clearly in the dazzling sunshine,
and, almost ahead, what at dawn had been the purple loom of Upolu was
changing to a cloud-capped dome of vivid green as the ship closed with
the land.

The _Shawnee_ was "a five-boat ship," and, judging from the appearance
of her decks, which were very clean, an unlucky one. She had been out
for over a year, and three months had passed since the last fish had
been killed. That was off the coast of Chile, and she was now cruising
westward and northward towards the eastern coast of New Guinea, where
Captain Harvey Lucy, the master, expected to make up for the persistent
ill-luck that had attended him so far. Naturally a man of most violent
and ungovernable temper, his behaviour to