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Updated: June 18, 2025
They represent the paltriest prizes. in the lottery that no Government, however paternal, may prohibit, being mere "baroque," fit only to be pounded up as medicine for some Chinaman luxuriously sick. Yet there is a chance. Some day the great prize may be drawn. And then, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?" The Beachcomber may be perverted into well, the next best on the list.
"I don't believe they'd hurt me," he said to himself. "They're just like a lot of schoolboys, only so much uglier." The beachcomber made a movement, and the blacks' faces were in a flash like so much carved ebony, and they rowed on, choosing as if from old habit the way into the canal-like passage among the rocks, and leaping out at the home-made wharf.
From the simple, loafing beachcomber stage of life to that of a leader of the natives in their tribal wars was a simple but natural transition, and Jim Martin, son of a convict father and mother whose forbears were of the scum of Liverpool, and knew the precincts of a prison better than the open air, followed the path ordained for him by Fate.
He was an ex-seaman and beachcomber who made regular voyages to southern ports and imported personally conducted invoices of talking parrots and dialectic paroquets. He had a stiff knee, neck, and nerve. I had gone to him to buy a parrot to present, at Christmas, to my Aunt Joanna.
She thought a moment, and then briefly, but clearly, sketched the life of those islands, showing how, in spite of missionary labour selfish and unselfish, the native became the victim of civilisation, the prey of the white trader and beachcomber, who were protected by men-of-war with convincing Nordenfeldt and Hotchkiss guns; how the stalwart force of barbaric existence declined, and with it the crude sense of justice, the practice of communism at its simplest and purest, the valour of nationality.
"Look ye here," said Bostock, in hoarse, stentorian tones, "I've got a double gun, double-loaded, in my fins, and I'm pynting down straight at you, my old beachcomber; and I tell you what it is, if you begin any of your games again I looses off both barrels and ends you. D'yer hear?" "Yes, I hear, cooky. I won't fire any more. You must bring that doctor down to see to me. I'm wrecked."
Whenever I feel particularly gregarious, I take the launch and run over to Copeley's and play poker for a couple of days. Lonesomeness isn't my worry. I can't keep a good man beyond three pay-days. They want some fun, and there isn't any. No other white people within twenty miles. I've combed Hong-Kong. They all balk because there aren't any petticoats. I won't have a beachcomber on the island.
By what right did this ragged beachcomber, in dungaree trousers and a cotton shirt, suggest such a thing as peace and content to him and his overwrought, exhausted soul? The captain did not reason this; it was the unconscious process of emotion that caused his resentment. "Fifteen days," he answered shortly. "Who are you?"
"Two can play at that game. But what's he going to do?" "Now then," cried the beachcomber, "into the boat with you. I'm going to have those casks tapped and see what the stuff's like. Hi! Jack, take some buckets in the boat." The black darted about and secured three buckets, which he tossed over the side into the boat.
"What's the matter with you?" growled Bostock; "too drunk to move?" "No-o-o-o!" roared the beachcomber. "I fell down these cursed stairs and broke both my legs." "Oh, that's it, is it?" said Bostock, coolly. "I was wondering what was the matter. Well, it'll keep you quiet for a bit." "You send down the doctor, I tell you." "He can't come, and if he could he wouldn't.
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