United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But she only went to the corner where a lot of gay-coloured rugs were hanging, and stood there waiting to hear what Oily Dave might have to tell. How slowly he walked up from the bank! She could hear his heavy seaboots squelching through the mud, then the deep, grunting noise which always accompanied any of his movements.
Beyond the circle of resting men Bill Blunt groaned away at an endless, tuneless ditty concerning "A sailorman as fell overboard in a gale, an' fell wi' a gal wi' a tail, an' got marri-e-d to a little marmaid an' wuz changed into a marman, an' never arterwards could he see th' use o' the seaboots he wore when he fell overboard, 'cos how could ye tell which boot 'ud fit a bloomin' flapper as wuz naither right, ner left, but 'twartships?"
First he cut the now useless tents into suitable lengths; then he cut the legs of a pair of seaboots into narrow strips, and using these in much the same way that the leather binding is put round the edge of upholstered chairs, he nailed the tent-cloth all round the insides of the outer gunwales of the two boats in such a way that it hung down like a valance to the ground, where it was secured with spars and oars.
"Gawd bless you, mate!" came chokingly from the ground and the rescued man, extricating himself from beneath the body of his stunned assailant, rose unsteadily to his feet and lurched toward me. As I had surmised, he was a sailor, wearing a rough, blue-serge jacket and having his greasy trousers thrust into heavy seaboots by which I judged that he was but newly come ashore.
Then, too, I had another advantage over my companions; I was wearing a pair of seaboots which effectually protected my feet from either the terrible fins or the teeth of the fish in the bottom of the canoe.
When the weather was too stormy for him to go to sea, and there was nothing to do on his little homestead, he sat at home and patched seaboots for his friends down in the hamlet. But he seldom got paid for it. "Leave it till next time," said they. And Sören had nothing much to say against this arrangement, it was to him just as good as a savings bank.
As the captain was speaking the parlour door opened and the mate of the barque, a tall, red-bearded sailor, stepped in. He had obtained a complete rig-out from some kind-hearted fisherman, and looked in his comfortable jersey and well-greased seaboots a very favourable specimen of a shipwrecked mariner.
Word Of The Day