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Nearly all the sailors on the fishing-smacks were barefooted, many were bareheaded, and all had been tanned a dark mahogany color by weeks of exposure to the rays of a tropical sun. Their dress consisted, generally, of a shirt and a pair of loose trousers of coarse gray cotton, like the dress worn in summer by Siberian convicts. Dr.
The mere hint of his approach fills with dread every craft that swims the sea, from fishing-smacks to four-masted ships that recognise the sway of the West Wind. Even in his most accommodating mood he inspires a dread of treachery.
Sailors lying on the flat parapets shouted hoarsely to their fellows in the rigging of the ships that lay tossing in the docks; fishermen's families tossed their farewells above the hubbub to the captain-fathers launching their fishing-smacks; one shrieking infant was being passed, gayly, from the poop of a distant deck, across the closely lying shipping, to the quay's steps, to be hushed by the generous opening of a peasant mother's bodice.
The fleets that were the wonder of the world when the Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of fishing-smacks now, and the manly people that performed such miracles of valor at Marathon are only a tribe of unconsidered slaves to-day. The classic Illyssus has gone dry, and so have all the sources of Grecian wealth and greatness.
=Odysseus=: as Homer in the "Odyssey" represents Odysseus, or Ulysses, to have done. =Byzantium=: the modern Constantinople. =Merchant ships=: small, one-masted vessels, not larger than our fishing-smacks. =Kerasus=: this place is the native home of the cherry, and the origin of its name.
Rarely one might make out fishing-smacks drifting across the horizon. Summer squatters never visited it; sportsmen shunned it, except in winter. Therefore, as I was about to do a bit of poetry, I thought that Pine Inlet was the spot for the deed. So I went there.
A conviction of the extreme steadiness of the vessel must speedily have seized everyone on board. There was no perceptible motion of any kind. The giant ship was speedily surrounded by yachts, tugs, fishing-smacks, and, indeed, by a representative of almost every kind of vessel which is prevalent at the Nore. These accompanied her as far on her way as their limited sailing powers would permit.
On the deck stood Heideck, who on his return had been promoted to major and appointed to the intelligence department for the coast district of Holland. In the afternoon he had seen a vessel entering the Schelde, which the pilot had identified as one of the fishing-smacks plying between the Shetland Islands and the Dutch ports.
At any rate, since this monster, whatever it was, had appeared along the New England shores, the little fishing-smacks and pleasure boats dared not venture forth. Wherever it appeared the boats fled to the nearest harbor, as was but prudent. If the animal was of a ferocious character, none cared to await its attack.
The anchorage ground was good; but the depth of water was suited to small vessels only to shabby old fishing-smacks which seldom paid their expenses, and to dirty little coasters carrying coals and potatoes. At the back of the hotel, two slovenly rows of cottages took their crooked course inland.
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