Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
Why should I care for them, poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and beach-combers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever-climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck,
No shipping masters or beach-combers over here, and he wants yer in his business, and he wants yer bad. Who's to pull or steer or sail ship if he loses yer? It's me and Johnson have to face the music. Get into yer bunks, now, and shut yer faces; I want to get some sleep." "That's all right all right," Parsons spoke up.
All attempts by the beach-combers to float her had proved futile; they had stripped her of her standing rigging and everything else of value, and had then abandoned her. Only the evenly balanced hull was left, its bottom timbers broken and its bent keelson buried in the sand.
Wilbur, Moran and Charlie had drawn off a little from the "Bertha Millner's" crew. The latter squatted in a line along the shore silent, reserved, looking vaguely seaward through the night. Moran spoke again, her scowl thickening: "What makes you think the beach-combers want our schooner?" "Him catch um schooner sure! Him want um boat to go home. No can get."
Three hundred miles wouldn't be a bad guess, and they've got the loot our ambergris I'll swear to that. They didn't leave that aboard when the junk sank." "Look here, Charlie," she said, turning to the Chinaman. "If the beach-combers take the schooner the 'Bertha Millner' from us we'll be left to starve on this beach." "I tink um yass." "How are we going to get home?
They were examining this armament and Moran was suggesting a plan of attack, when Hoang, the leader of the beach-combers, and one other Chinaman appeared some little distance below them on the beach. The moon was low and there was no great light, but the two beach-combers caught the flash of the points of the spades. They halted and glanced narrowly and suspiciously at the group.
Borne down by depression, the day being yet at its noon, and the sun over the old point, it is four miles to the town, the Presidio, I have walked it often, and can do it once more, I passed the familiar objects, and it seemed to me that I remembered them better than those of any other place I had ever been in; the opening to the little cave; the low hills where we cut wood and killed rattlesnakes, and where our dogs chased the coyotes; and the black ground where so many of the ship's crew and beach-combers used to bring up on their return at the end of a liberty day, and spend the night sub Jove.
The Chink's Head was a name the beach-combers gave to a wretched inn off the Rue Bouterie, kept by a one-eyed Chinaman, where for six sous you could sleep in a cot and for three on the floor.
Many a dispute have I heard raging high between professed "beach-combers," as to whether the hides should be stowed "shingling," or "back-to-back, and flipper-to-flipper;" upon which point there was an entire and bitter division of sentiment among the savans.
Without there were two or three loafers, half boatmen, half vagabonds, waiting to pick up stray sixpences a sort of leprosy of rascal and sneak in their faces and the lounge of their bodies. These Thames-side "beach-combers" are a sorry lot, a special Pariah class of themselves.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking