THE WRECK OF THE CORSAIRE
THE WRECK OF
THE CORSAIRE
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF “THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,” “MAROONED,”
“A THREE-STRANDED YARN,” ETC.
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY
{4}
Copyright, 1897,
BY
CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY.{5}
| Chapter: I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII., XIII., XIV. |
THE WRECK OF
THE CORSAIRE.
I.
All day long there had been a pleasant breeze blowing from abeam; but asthe sun sank into the west the wind fined into light, delicate curls ofshadow upon the sea that, at the hour of sundown, when the greatluminary hung poised like a vast target of flaming gold upon theocean-line, turned into a surface of quicksilver through which there rana 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 humanlife{6} runs, in this century nevertheless, when the old traditionalconditions of the sea-life were yet current—the roundabout Indianvoyage by way of the Cape—the slaver sneaking across the brassyparallels of the Middle Passage—the picaroon in the waters of theAntilles dodging the fiery sloop whose adamantine grin of cannons wasrendered horribly significant to the eye of the greasy pirate by thecross of crimson under whose meteoric folds the broadside thundered.
I was a passenger aboard the Ruby, making the voyage to India for mypleasure. The fact was, being a man of independent means, I was withoutany sort of business to detain me at home. Your continental excursionwas but a twopenny business to me. Here was this huge ball of earth tobe circumnavigated whilst one was young, with spirits renderedwaterproof by health. Time enough, I thought, to amble about{7} Europewhen Australia began to look a long way off. So this was my thirdvoyage. 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 ofstriking across into Persia, thence to Arabia, and so home by way of theclassic shores of the Mediterranean.
Well, it happened this 18th of June to be the captain’s birthday. Hisname was Bow; he would be fifty-three years old that day he told us, andas he had used the sea since the age of thirteen he was