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Lord, how proud I was!" He stood back to see it better, frowning a little. "One of those ropes is wrong; any fool could tell that " His hands hovered over it for a moment dropped. "No matter the new owners are probably not seafarers! The lacquer chest is at the far end, isn't it? Yes, here. Are three enough four? We're off!" But still he lingered, sweeping the great room with his dark eyes.
In this instance they were all fine specimens of English manhood. It was no ordinary sight to witness the display of bunting as it stretched from royal truck to rail, and the grotesque love-making of the seafarers as they hugged and kissed their wives and sweethearts over and over again with amazing rapidity.
And, since all the fleet-clans denied the sneak-and-strike, kill-and-destroy tactics which had finished those Rover holdings, the seafarers were divided in their opinion as to whether the murderous raids were the work of Wreckers suddenly acting out of character and taking to the sea to bring war back to their enemies, or whether there was a rogue fleet moving against their own kind for some purpose no Rover could yet guess.
When you think that in the last year of the war we had 140,000 seamen and mariners afloat, commanded by 4000 officers, and that half of these had been turned adrift when the Peace of Amiens laid their ships up in the Hamoaze or Portsdown creek, you will understand that London, as well as the dockyard towns, was full of seafarers.
It was only possible to sail in the daytime, and at night the Vega lay fastened by her ice anchors. One calm and fine evening some of our seafarers went ashore and lighted an enormous bonfire of driftwood. Here they sat talking of the warm countries they would sail past for two months. They were only a few miles from the easternmost extremity of Asia at Behring Strait.
When we left the palace we were still but seafarers ashore; and within the hour we had installed our goods in one of the six foreign houses of Butaritari, namely, that usually occupied by Maka, the Hawaiian missionary. Two San Francisco firms are here established, Messrs. Crawford and Messrs.
More than once when he had come to the town Gilian looked a little way off from the Cross upon this busy concourse in the bay and wished that he might venture on the quay, but the throng of tall, dark-shirted fishermen and seafarers frightened him so that he must stand aloof guessing at the nearer interest of the spectacle.
The seafarers and the peasants always had a difficulty in keeping on peaceable terms with one another; they were as different as land and sea. But to-day the indifferent attitude of the peasants made the sea-folk eye them with suppressed rage.
Things were kept moving in such a lively way when these young seafarers were about, that a feeling of desolation depressed the whole village for many days after they had left it. Yet amid all the simple charm of the people and the natural beauty of the place there came a period of sorrowing and grief.
A splendid Newfoundland fisherman and his wife had a summer fishing station here, and with that generous open-heartedness which is characteristic of our seafarers, they were only too anxious to help. "Of course, she would make clothing while I was North" out of such odd garments as a general collection produced. "She wouldn't think of letting them wear it till I came along South, not she."