Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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The captain and I paced the deck. Even as we started to walk, the boatswain, one of the burliest of the Dutchmen, piped the hands to breakfast. The silver notes rang cheerily through the little ship and wonderfully heightened to the fancy the airy, saucy, free-born look of the timber witch as she thundered along with foam to her figure-head; her white pinions beat time to the organ melodies of the ocean wind; smoke hospitably blew from the chimney of her little caboose; Dutch and English sailors entered and departed from that sea kitchen, carrying cans of steaming tea with them into their forecastle; there was a pleasant noise of the chuckling of hens; the sun shone brightly among the wool-white clouds; splendid was the spacious scene of sea rolling in sparkling deeply-blue heights, and every surge, as it ran, magnificently draped itself in a flashing veil of froth.

“I like your little ship, Captain Greaves,” said I.

“I have been watching you, and I see that you like her,” he answered.