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These women looked askance at me, and regarded my unfamiliar uniform with suspicion, but after great difficulty one of their number was induced to carry me alongside an ominous looking craft lying in the harbor a black-hulled brig of probably six hundred and fifty tons burden. Of the sentinel on deck I asked: "Your captain "
Waiting on the little bridge was far from being wearisome, there was such a fascination in watching the costumed and manifold life of the harbor, the black-hulled, sullen-looking steamers from Europe discharging cargo into lighters, Malay prahus of all sizes but one form, sharp at both ends, and with eyes on their bows, like the Cantonese and Cochin China boats, reeling as though they would upset under large mat sails, and rowing-boats rowed by handsome, statuesque Klings.
That it was a boat of about the size of the Follow Me and that is was painted dark became more and more apparent. Then, quite suddenly, a ray of rosy light shot up beyond Eastern Point and the neighbouring motor-boat lay revealed. Steve sighed his disappointment. She was not the Follow Me after all, but a battered, black-hulled power-boat used for gill-netting.
But no, there was something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore!
Before him lay a patch of gray-green bay, flanked on either side by wharves upon which two black-hulled lumber schooners were disgorging their resinous cargo. The strike of the longshoremen was still in progress and the Embarcadero as good as deserted.
He was a Liverpool man, master and owner of his own rakish-looking little black-hulled craft, that, rumor was wont to say, was not averse to a bit of slaving, if she found herself in far seas, with a likely run before her. "You're a swell, that's what you are," emphasized the skipper. "You bean't no sort of use to me." "Wait a second," answered Cecil.
Both harbors, with their crowded shipping and many stately warehouses, were in view. In Great Harbor there floated three frowning, black-hulled, iron-clad monsters, whose open ports and protruding cannon showed their warlike purpose. At intervals the strains of a marine band came from on board one of them.
But more than any other she saw the craft of her husband and Monohan, the powerful, black-hulled Panther, the smaller, daintier Waterbug. There was a big gasoline workboat, gray with a yellow funnel, that she knew was Monohan's. And this craft bore past there often, inching its downward way with swifters of logs, driving fast up-lake without a tow.
Kidd, Lafitte and I infested the coast thereabout, sailing three "low, black-hulled schooners with long rakish masts," I forced hundreds of merchant seamen to walk the plank even helpless women and children. Unless the sharks devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of that iron foundry.
But no, there was something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore!
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