Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 4, 2025
A brown-sailed fishing boat was racing for the narrow entrance to the tidal way. "I am beginning to understand what there is about this coast which fascinated my father so," he remarked. "Are you?" she answered gravely. "Years ago I used to love it, but not now." He tried to change the subject, but the gloom had settled upon her face once more.
'We must leave it; we must pass out of it, she lamented, over and over again. Each new charm she caught eagerly. 'I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp, she said to herself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth. They were still among the small shipping of Ryde.
Near the salty shore a fishing village scatters its greystone cabins along the first terrace of the bluffs. Outwards, ever changing in colour and temper roll and fret the grey waters of the Irish Sea, turbulent at times, but generally lenient enough to the brown-sailed ketches that break the regular sweep of the western horizon as they toil at the perpetual harvest of the deep.
Several sloops and brigs were lying there in a cluster, and a whole fleet of brown-sailed fishing-boats were tacking slowly in. Yet all was quiet on the curving quay and on the half-moon fort over which floated the white flag with the golden fleur-de-lis. The port lay on their quarter now and they were drawing away more quickly as the breeze freshened.
A soft breeze was sending the brown-sailed fisher boats across the heaving bay. Straight before the three spread the white stuccoed houses of Cenchræa, the eastern haven of Corinth; far ahead in smooth semicircle rose the green crests of the Argive mountains, while to their right upreared the steep lonely pyramid of brown rock, Acro-Corinthus, the commanding citadel of the thriving city.
An unusual quantity had come in with the last tide, and this, and the confusion of the water, and the restless dipping and flapping of the noisy gulls, and an angry light out seaward beyond the brown-sailed barges that were turning black, foreshadowed a stormy night.
Yet it is a sea that can be kindly enough; and in the long, golden summer evenings, when the brown-sailed fishing-boats in endless procession draw out from the "haven under the hill," to vanish seaward in the deepening twilight, you would scarce believe that a thing so gentle could be guilty of treachery, or ever could arise in sudden mad frenzy to slay those who had trusted it.
The road follows the curves of the Lough, and we watch the black steamers ploughing along, and the brown-sailed little boats scudding before the breeze. The Lough is on one side, and a remarkable, high steep ridge on the other, yellow with budded whins, green with creeping ivy, and up on the utmost ridge a row of plumed pines.
You have a fine prospect from the window." He drew the blind aside and looked out into the darkness. A gleam of moonlight lay upon the heaving ocean, and in the centre of this silver streak was a single brown-sailed fishing-boat running to the eastward before the wind. The inspector's keen eye rested upon it for an instant, and then he dropped the blind and turned away.
It is known there was a fog over the Solent on the afternoon in question and that a small brown-sailed boat with a man sitting in the stern put out from the shore and was presently swallowed up in the white tasselled wreaths of mist. That same boat was discovered minus its passenger in the early hours of the following day.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking