United States or Nepal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From a certain angle you would think a very bilious white man. And I daresay he was. He owned a Malay prau and called himself The Nakhoda, as one would say: The Captain. Aha! Now you remember. He couldn't, apparently, speak any other European language than English, but he flew the Dutch flag on his prau. "The other was the Frenchman without hands. Yes.
Fortunately, though, the little stream gurgled among the stones, and was so handy that the men had but to scoop out holes in the sand, or to form them by turning over some huge stone, to have in a few minutes tiny pools of clear cool water with which to slake their thirst. On came the prau, with her swarthy crew crowding her bamboo decks, and their dark skins shining in the sun.
Every man uttered a low cheer, and settled in his place, well hidden from the occupants of the coming prau, and ready to deliver his fire when the enemy came near. It was coming steadily in, the sweeps being worked by the motley crew of scoundrels on board with a regularity which drew rough compliments from the men, and made Mr Gregory utter a remark.
Can not Tuan see it run under his own eyes?" said Wasub with an alarmed earnestness. "Look. Now it is in my mind that a prau coming from amongst the southern islands, if steered cunningly in the free set of the current, would approach the bows of this, our brig, drifting silently as a shape without a substance." "And board suddenly is that it?" said Lingard.
The sailors sent up a hearty American cheer and a tiger, as they saw the prau come to a standstill. Our boat sprang away into the darkness. We did not cease rowing until dawn, then we lay back on our oars and stretched our tired backs and arms. I had taken my place at the oar during the night. Away out on the northern horizon we saw a black speck; on the southern horizon another.
I have promised to Tuan Lingard twenty men and a prau to make war in Wajo. The men are good and look at the prau; it is swift and strong." I must say, Tom, the prau is the best craft of the kind I have ever seen. I said you paid him well for the help. "And I also would pay," says he, "if you let me have a few guns and a little powder for my men.
All at once there was a puff of smoke, a sharp crack, and at the same moment a deafening report from the prau, but the charge of missiles went hurtling and screaming up through the mizen rigging and away over the ship to sea. The major's shot was more successful, for a man fell. "He was a little too quick for me," said the major, reloading and waiting for another chance.
His business was that of a coffee and opium merchant. He had a coffee estate at Bontyne, and a small prau which traded to the Eastern islands near New Guinea, for mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell. About one he would return home, have coffee and cake or fried plantain, first changing his dress for a coloured cotton shirt and trousers and bare feet, and then take a siesta with a book.
When the cup came we enjoyed a good drink of the cool pure water, and before we left had carried away, I believe, every drop on the island. In the evening a good-sized prau appeared in sight, making apparently for the island where our men were left, and we had some hopes they might be seen and picked up, but it passed along mid-channel, and did not notice the signals we tried to make.
"Is there no light?" said Morgan at last, after they had been rowing softly about for quite a quarter of an hour. "No, not a spark," whispered Mr Gregory. "I've tried to keep in the course by which the prau came when it passed us, but the darkness is so deceptive that we might as well be blind."
Word Of The Day