The Project Gutenberg EBook of Foster's Letter Of Marque, by Louis Becke

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Title: Foster's Letter Of Marque
A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: April 12, 2008 [EBook #25058]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger

FOSTER'S LETTER OF MARQUE

A TALE OF OLD SYDNEY

From "The Tapu Of Banderah and Other Stories"

By Louis Becke

C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.

1901

I

One by one the riding-lights of the few store-ships and whalers lying
in Sydney Harbour on an evening in January, 1802, were lit, and as the
clear notes of a bugle from the barracks pealed over the bay, followed
by the hoarse calls and shrill whistles of the boatswains' mates on a
frigate that lay in Sydney Cove, the mate of the _Policy_ whaler jumped
up from the skylight where he had been lying smoking, and began to pace
the deck.

The _Policy_ was anchored between the Cove and Pinchgut, ready for sea.
The north-easter, which for three days had blown strongly, had now died
away, and the placid waters of the harbour shimmered under the starlight
of an almost cloudless sky. As the old mate tramped to and fro on the
deserted poop, his keen seaman's eye caught sight of some faint grey
clouds rising low down in the westward--signs of a south-easterly coming
before the morning.

Stepping to the break of the poop, the officer hailed the look-out
forward, and asked if he could see the captain's boat coming.

"No, sir," the man replied. "I did see a boat a while ago, and thought
it was ours, but it turned out to be one from that Batavian Dutchman
anchored below Pinchgut. Her captain always goes ashore about this
time."

Swinging round on his heel with an angry exclamation, the mate resumed
his walk, muttering and growling to himself as elderly mates do
mutter and growl when a captain promises to be on board at five in the
afternoon and is not in evidence at half-past seven. Perhaps, too, the
knowledge of the particular cause of the captain's delay somewhat added
to his chief officer's ill-temper--that cause being a pretty girl; for
the mat