Gasping, blue in the face, half drowned, the boy was flung spitefully–as though the sea scorned so poor a victory–high on the sandy beach, where succeeding shorter waves lapped at him and retired. The encircling life-buoy was large enough to permit his crouching within it. Pillowing his head on one side of the smooth ring, […]

He stood before the recruiting officer, trembling with nervousness, anxious of face, and clothed in rags; but he was clean, for, knowing the moral effect of cleanliness, he had lately sought the beach and taken a swim. “Want to enlist?” asked the officer, taking his measure with trained eye. “Yes, sir; I read you wanted […]

Extract from hospital record of the case of John Anderson, patient of Dr. Brown, Ward 3, Room 6: August 3. Arrived at hospital in extreme mental distress, having been bitten on wrist three hours previously by dog known to have been rabid. Large, strong man, full-blooded and well nourished. Sanguine temperament. Pulse and temperature higher […]

As night descended, cold and damp, the wind hauled, and by nine o’clock the ship was charging along before a half-gale and a rising sea from the port quarter. When the watch had braced the yards, the mate ordered the spanker brailed in and the mizzen-royal clued up, as the ship steered hard. This was […]

Hogged at bow and stern, her deck sloped at the ends like a truck’s platform, while a slight twist in the old hull canted the foremast to port and the mizzen to starboard. It would be hard to know when she was on an even keel. The uneven planking, inboard and out, was scarred like […]

As eight bells sounded, Captain Bacon and Mr. Knapp came up from breakfast, and Mr. Hansen, the squat and square-built second mate, immediately went down. The deck was still wet from the morning washing down, and forward the watch below were emerging from the forecastle to relieve the other half, who were coiling loosely over […]

“Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.”BARD OF AVON. “But 4 times he who gits hiz blo’ in fust.”JOSH BILLINGS. Captain William Belchior was more than a martinet. He was known as “Bucko” Belchior in every port where the English language is spoken, having earned this prefix by the earnest readiness with which, […]

The orgy was finished. The last sea-song had resounded over the smooth waters of the bay; the last drunken shout, oath, and challenge were voiced; the last fight ended in helplessness and maudlin amity, and the red-shirted men were sprawled around on the moonlit deck, snoring. Though the barrel of rum broached on the main-hatch […]

She had a large crew, abnormally large hawse-pipes, and a bad reputation–the last attribute born of the first. Registered as the Rosebud, this innocent name was painted on her stern and on her sixteen dories; but she was known among the fishing-fleet as the Ishmaelite, and the name fitted her. Secretive and unfriendly, she fished […]

Two men walked side by side down the steps of the Criminal Court Building. They were dressed in “store clothes”; and, while they were alike in type, yet they were unlike: one could not be mistaken for the other. But they had the same facial angle; they were of about the same age, thirty-five; each […]

Mr. John Murphy, boarding master, was on bad terms with himself. He had been kicked off the poop-deck of Captain Williams’s big ship, the Albatross, lying off Tompkinsville, waiting to dock, thence to the gangway, and from there shoved, struck in the face, and further kicked and maltreated until he had flopped into the boat […]

While exploring the rocky gullies and canyons in the foothills of Mount Ararat last summer, I found a roughly symmetrical mass of pure copper. Oxidized and honeycombed as it was, I recognized the metal immediately, and repressing a strong inclination to hunt for the lead and stake out my claim, I took my find home […]

Build an inverted Harvey-steel box about eight feet high, one hundred and fifty feet long, half as wide, with walls of eighteen-inch thickness, and a roof of three, and you have strong protection against shot and shell. Build up from the ends of the box two steel barbettes with revolving turrets as heavy as your […]

“I have seen wicked men and fools, a great manyof each; and I believe they both get paid inthe end, but the fools first.”ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. PART I The first man to climb the Almena’s side-ladder from the tug was the shipping-master, and after him came the crew he had shipped. They clustered at the […]

“I tell ye I saw it–wi’ these eyes I saw it!” “You think you seen it.” “Now I quit. Ye talk like every mate or skipper or Consul I’ve told this to. Just the same, I never git to the end o’ the third day out, either way,–I’m in a six-day boat, ye know–but what […]

A few months ago I attended a banquet and left it as I always leave such functions, hungry. Entering an all-night lunch room I took a seat, and gave my order to a waiter, who, when he had filled it, sat down at the table with me. It was very late, and his duties were […]

He told the story while he and I smoked at one end of his veranda, and his kindly faced wife talked with “the only girl on earth” at the other end, beyond reach of his voice. He was a large, portly, and benign old gentleman, with an infinite experience of life, whom I had long […]

I could not help listening to the talk at the next table, because the orchestra was quiet and the conversation unrestrained; then, too, a nautical phrasing caught my ear and aroused my attention. For I had been a lifelong student of nautical matters. A side glance showed me the speaker, a white-haired, sunburned old fellow […]

I had known him for a painter of renown–a master of his art, whose pictures, which sold for high prices, adorned museums, the parlors of the rich, and, when on exhibition, were hung low and conspicuous. Also, I knew him for an expert photographer–an “art photographer,” as they say, one who dealt with this branch […]

Sam Rogers told me the story that follows, as we sat in the coils of the foremain and topsail braces–easy chairs aboard ship–and, sheltered from the blast of wind and spume by the high-weather rail, killed time in the night-watch by yarn-spinning. For neither of us had a wheel or lookout that night; and as […]