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This port of refuge is much frequented by coasters, as many as two or three hundred sails collecting here during a severe gale. The government is building a remarkable pier of solid iron spiles, three abreast, which, when completed, will run out seventeen hundred feet into the bay, and reach a depth of twenty-three feet of water. Captain Brown, of the Engineers, was in charge of the work.
With precautions, in the Rivers and on the S.W. Coast your touch of fever may be a thing inferior in danger and discomfort to a bad cold in England. Yet remember, before you elect to cast your lot in with the West Coasters, that 85 per cent. of them die of fever or return home with their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that there is no getting acclimatised to the Coast.
To-day it seems that economic conditions have so changed that the shipyards of the United States will again compete for the business of the world. We are building ships as good perhaps better than can be constructed anywhere else, but thus far we have not been able to build them as cheap. Accordingly our builders have been restricted to the construction of warships, coasters, and yachts.
I saw them from a car window on a June evening. The train had crossed the bridge at Newark, and below me in the river lay ships tiny coasters, I know now, but then in the dusk magnified for me to the dignity of world-wanderers.
The line-of-battle ships themselves, tacking on and off outside Brest, could earn nothing save honour; but the frigates in attendance made prizes of many coasters, and these, as is the rule of the service, were counted as belonging to the fleet, and their produce divided into head-money.
Once again I entered a hospital-train, but this time I would have no mussing round me as if I were a helpless child, but went upright, as a man should, though on crutches. When we journeyed to the port there was one of our good old Australian coasters waiting to bear us back again Home.
Very soon Otto heard the coasters all toiling up the hill again, and he called out, "Stay among the first, Wiseli, and go down again; after that we must go home." Wiseli was only too happy to do as she was bid, and enjoyed for a second time the long-wished-for pleasure.
The wind being light and variable, we drew very gradually inshore, till the mist suddenly lifting, as if at the command of a magician, disclosed to us the splendid and fantastic scenery of those rocky heights, as they rose proudly from the glittering ocean, which was dotted with numerous sails of fishing-boats and coasters, and here and there the canvas of some loftier merchantmen, making for the mouth of the Tagus.
How different must have been the place when the sound of the shipwright's hammer was incessantly heard, to what it now is, resting in the most perfect tranquillity, as if everybody in the neighbourhood had gone to sleep! No one was to be seen moving on shore, no one even on board the little coasters. Not a bird disturbed the calm surface of the river.
She counted the craft within her view: there were five; no, there were only four; no, there were seven, some of the specks having resolved themselves into two. They were all small coasters, and kept well within sight of land. Anne sank into a reverie. Then she heard a slight noise on her left hand, and turning beheld an old sailor, who had approached with a glass.
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