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
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