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"We're the second mate and bo'sun of the Falcon, sir, and one steerage passenger. Destroyed by fire five days ago; and we've been in this here cockle-shell ever since." But his voice was so husky and dry that he was almost unintelligible. "Mates, for the love of Heaven, give us summat to drink," cried the other man, as he was lifted into the boat.
To the Asiatic Sweet Waters you must go by boat, or rather by caique, a peculiar little frail cockle-shell of a conveyance, rowed by the most truculent-looking and unmitigated ruffians, Turkish or Grecian, to be found on any waters or in any land, Christian or heathen.
All his life was spent in wandering over the Seven Seas, in ships of every size, from a 25-ton cutter to a 400-ton Indiaman. In those days of navigation laws, blockades, hostile cruisers, hungry privateers, and bloodthirsty pirates, the smaller craft was often the better, for it was wiser to brave nature's moods in a cockle-shell than to attract men's notice in a great ship.
But this proved a failure, and went down instead of up, covering the water with a shower of golden sparks, which hissed and sputtered angrily on the green waves that were rocking the little Hilda back and forth as if she had been a cockle-shell. Of course there was no answer to this signal, for the ship could not have seen it at her great distance.
Nor could I restrain myself, but drank long draughts from the water-kegs, while Black kept to liquor; and was, I saw with fear, rapidly working himself up to a state of intoxication. You may ask if the terrors of the position came home to us thoroughly in that long day when we rode in a bit of a cockle-shell on the sweeping rollers of the Atlantic, but I answer you, I do not think that they did.
"I spare or kill to please myself and none other. But where is your cockle-shell that brought you hither?" Then Odysseus answered craftily: "Alas, my ship is gone! Only I and my men escaped alive from the sea."
A score of gaily clad boatmen, whose very patches on their trousers were as picturesque as the patches on Italian sails, held out their hands to enable us to step from one cockle-shell to another, to reach the pier. In the way the boats touch each other in the harbour at Smyrna, I was reminded of the Thames in Henley week.
The first thing that impressed me about her was her diminutiveness; in comparison with some of the craft lying in the Hole she looked little more than a mere boat, and the idea of actually going to sea and attempting serious work in such a cockle-shell struck me as little short of an absurdity.
Their little boat drew closer to the near side of the island; the hillocks stood up higher; the tapering topmasts of the craft on the other side disappeared. The crabber's cockle-shell came to anchor in a tranquil sandy cove. Mr.
He carried about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and having attended under the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs. Dobbin tried to hum it as he walked away, and found he was humming the tune which Amelia Sedley sang on the stairs, as she came down to dinner. He burst out laughing at himself; for the truth is, he could sing no better than an owl.
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