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The water is very muddy and very smooth, and reflects every object to perfection; for these early mornings are almost invariably still, and the water is unruffled by the north wind, which, with curious regularity, springs up before midday. I have already spoken of the high lateen sail of the Nile boats, a form of sail which, though beautiful, has not been devised for pictorial purposes.

Along the wall they hastened at a run, until they came to a small lateen-rigged vessel, secured to the farthest end of the mole, and with her one huge sail roughly furled round the yard. They dashed on board, cut the ropes through, and the sailor, swarming up the rigging, cut the lashings, and the foot of the lateen sail dropped down on deck.

The very name of Bombay, which for most people recalls a spacious and dignified landfall, lateen sails, green islands and jutting precipices, a long city of trees and buildings like a bright and various breakwater between the great harbor and the sea, and then exquisite little temples, painted bullock carriages, Towers of Silence, Parsis, and an amazingly kaleidoscopic population, is for me a reminder of narrow, foetid, plague-stricken streets and tall insanitary tenement-houses packed and dripping with humanity, and of terrible throbbing factories working far into the night, blazing with electric light against the velvet-black night-sky of India, damp with the steam-clouds that are maintained to moisten the thread, and swarming with emaciated overworked brown children for even the adults, spare and small, in those mills seem children to a western eye.

His crew sullenly tailed on to the halyards, and the strange, outlandish sail, lateen in rig and dyed a warm brown, rose in the air. We were sailing on the wind, and when Yellow Handkerchief flattened down the sheet the junk forged ahead and the tow-line went slack. Fast as the Reindeer could sail, the junk outsailed her; and to avoid running her down I hauled a little closer on the wind.

Lastly, attached to masts projecting horizontally from each end of the ship, are a couple of triangular or lateen sails; smaller sails are also attached to the under part of the balloons, which, enclosed in net-work of strong cord, are fastened to the roof of the galleries, directly over the wings, beneath which, again, are the bridges from which the crew are to work the ship.

The little boats, with folded lateen sails, near the pier had coloured lanterns slung from the mast to the bowsprit. The sea broke like ruffled silk. ANZIO, April 17. Like Johnson and his wall-fruit, I have never had as many asphodels to look at as I wanted.

There is still a suggestion of menace, a hint of piracy, in the blood whenever the lateen goes by, fishing or fruiting or coasting. 'This is not my ancestral trade, she whispers to the accomplice sea.

They had sometimes one, and sometimes two, lateen sails, composed of pieces of matting, the ropes being made of the coarse filaments of the plantain tree. When they could not sail they were propelled by sculls, the handles of which rose, nearly upright, four feet above the deck.

We were now close to the lighthouse of Tarifa, and turning the head of the bark towards the west, we made directly for the coast of Africa. The wind was now blowing very fresh, and as we had it almost in our poop, we sprang along at a tremendous rate, the huge lateen sails threatening every moment to drive us beneath the billows, which an adverse tide raised up against us.

The forecastle carried the main battery of guns, and was closed in below so as to provide quarters for the fighting men. The poop had a deck house and a smaller battery; this deck also was closed in, furnishing quarters for the officers. There were two or three masts, lateen rigged, adorned in peace or war with the greatest profusion of banners and streamers.