The Wreck of the Corsaire
()
About this ebook
Read more from William Clark Russell
The Life Of Admiral Lord Collingwood [Illustrated Edition] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStories by English Authors: The Sea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilliam Dampier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRound the Galley Fire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wreck of the Grosvenor: All Volumes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Book for the Hammock Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Tale of Two Tunnels: A Romance of the Western Waters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Death Ship (Musaicum Adventure Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Last Entry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilliam Dampier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Honour of the Flag Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Death Ship (Vol. 1-3): A Strange Story (Sea Adventure Novel) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wreck of the Grosvenor (Complete 3 Volumes) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tragedy of Ida Noble Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Holdsworth, Chief Mate Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Marriage at Sea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wreck of the Grosvenor (Vol. 1-3): Sea Adventure Novel (Complete Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wreck of the Grosvenor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaster Rockafellar's Voyage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Holdsworth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Wreck of the Corsaire
Related ebooks
The Wreck of the Corsaire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRound the Galley Fire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDown South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (Warbler Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe End of the Tether Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJoseph Conrad: 9 Quintessential Books in One Collection: Including Memoirs, Letters & Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Narrative of Charles Marlow: 4 Book Collection - Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Youth & Chance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness: Adventure on the Congo River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness: A Joseph Conrad Trilogy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heart of Darkness: "We live as we dream…alone…" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTyphoon: "There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (Dream Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt Last: A Christmas in the West Indies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Youth: A Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Far Lands Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (British Classics Series): Including Author's Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heart of Darkness (ArcadianPress Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYouth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Death Ship (Musaicum Adventure Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Secret Sharer and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart Of Darkness (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Gipsy of the Horn - Life in a Deep-Sea Sailing Ship Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness Trilogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anonymous Sex Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Foster Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Wreck of the Corsaire
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Wreck of the Corsaire - William Clark Russell
William Clark Russell
The Wreck of the Corsaire
EAN 8596547085492
DigiCat, 2022
Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info
Table of Contents
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
I.
Table of Contents
All
day long there had been a pleasant breeze blowing from abeam; but as the sun sank into the west the wind fined into light, delicate curls of shadow upon the sea that, at the hour of sundown, when the great luminary hung poised like a vast target of flaming gold upon the ocean-line, turned into a surface of quicksilver through which there ran a light, wide, long-drawn heave of swell, regular as a respiration, rhythmic as the sway of a cradle to the song of a mother.
The ship was an Indiaman named the Ruby; the time long ago, as human life runs, in this century nevertheless, when the old traditional conditions of the sea-life were yet current—the roundabout Indian voyage by way of the Cape—the slaver sneaking across the brassy parallels of the Middle Passage—the picaroon in the waters of the Antilles dodging the fiery sloop whose adamantine grin of cannons was rendered horribly significant to the eye of the greasy pirate by the cross of crimson under whose meteoric folds the broadside thundered.
I was a passenger aboard the Ruby, making the voyage to India for my pleasure. The fact was, being a man of independent means, I was without any sort of business to detain me at home. Your continental excursion was but a twopenny business to me. Here was this huge ball of earth to be circumnavigated whilst one was young, with spirits rendered waterproof by health. Time enough, I thought, to amble about Europe when Australia began to look a long way off. So this was my third voyage. One I had made to Sydney and Melbourne, and a second to China; and now I was bound to Bombay with some kind of notion beyond of striking across into Persia, thence to Arabia, and so home by way of the classic shores of the Mediterranean.
Well, it happened this 18th of June to be the captain’s birthday. His name was Bow; he would be fifty-three years old that day he told us, and as he had used the sea since the age of thirteen he was to be taken as a man who knew his business. And a better sailor there never was, and never also was there a person who looked less like a sailor. If ever you have seen a print of Charles Lamb you have had an excellent likeness of Captain Bow before you—a pale, spare creature of a somewhat Hebraic cast of countenance, with a brow undarkened by any stains of weather. His memory went far back; he had served as mate in John Company’s ships, had known Commodore Dance who beat Linois and spoke of him as a perfect gentleman; deplored the gradual decay of the British sailor, and would talk with a wistful gleam in his eye of the grand and generous policy of the Leadenhall Street Directors in allowing to their captains as much cubic capacity in the ships they commanded for their own private use and emolument as would furnish out the dimensions of a considerable smack.
It was his birthday, and long ago all of us passengers had made up our minds to celebrate the occasion by a supper, a dance on deck, and by obtaining permission for Jack forward to have a ball, on condition that we should be allowed to ply him with drink enough to keep his heels nimble, and no more. We were in the Indian Ocean climbing north, somewhere upon the longitude of Am-sterdam Island, so formidable was the easting made in the fine old times. The latitude, I think, was about 12° south, and desperately hot it was, though the sun hung well in the north. Spite of awnings and wet swabs the planks of the deck seemed to tingle like tin through the thin soles of your boots. If you put your nose into an open skylight the air that rose drove you back with a sense of suffocation, so heavily was the fiery stagnation of it loaded with smells of food and of the cabin interior, though there never was a sweeter and breezier cuddy with its big windows and windsail-heels when the thermometer gave the place the least chance. But when the sun was nearly setting, some sailors quietly came aft and fell to work to make a ball-room of the poop. They took the bunting out of the signal locker and stretched it along the ridge-ropes betwixt the awning and the rail until it was like standing inside a huge Chinese lantern for color. They hung the ship’s lamps along in rows, roused up the piano from its moorings in the cuddy, embellished the tops of the hencoops with red baize, and in fifty directions not worth the trouble of indicating, so decorated and glorified the after-end of the ship that when the lamps came to be lighted with streaks of pearl-colored moonshine glittering upon the deck betwixt the interstices of the signal flags, and movement enough in the tranquil lift of the great fabric to the swell to fill the eye with alternations of swaying shadow and gleam, this ball-room of almond-white plank and canvas ceiling of milky softness and walls of radiant banners was more like some fairy sea-vision than a reality, especially with the glimpse you caught of the vast silent ocean solitude outside with its sky of hovering stars and a stillness as of a dead world in the atmosphere—such a contrast, by heaven! to the revelry within the shipboard pavilion, when once the music had struck up and the forms of women in white gowns fluffing up about them like soapsuds were swimming round the decks in the embrace of their partners, that a kind of shudder would come into you with the mere thinking of the difference between the two things.
The music was good; there was a steerage passenger, a lady, who played the piano incomparably well; then there was