United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All we can say is that we have made a good beginning. We have laid the whole province waste, and it will be a long time before they forget it." The journey was hot and tedious; the desolated shore, the corpses and vultures, and an occasional junk with square-rigged sails and high poop were the only things upon which to fix the eye.
One of these gentlemen, a highly esteemed shipmaster and friend, testified as government expert in a famous murder trial in Boston, not long since, that a ship would not hold her course long enough for the steersman to leave the helm to cut the captain's throat. Ordinarily it would be so. One might say that with a square-rigged ship it would always be so.
It was so very distant, however, as to render its character still uncertain, though Mulford fancied it was a square-rigged vessel heading to the northward. By its position, it must be in one of the channels of the reef, and by its course, if he were not deceived, it was standing through, from the main passage along the southern side of the rocks, to come out on the northern.
From the neighbouring hamlets, the peasantry cautiously showed themselves, as if watching the issue of the expected engagement; and at no great distance in the bay were two square-rigged vessels, bearing the English flag, whose tops and yards were crowded with less timid spectators.
The only fine houses are those occupied by the Europeans and the Sultan, and they front the harbour, which is considered a very good one, and is very constantly filled with shipping, the Sultan's men-of-war, foreign square-rigged vessels, and a host of buggaloes from Aden, Muscat, Catch, and Bombay.
He soon determined, to the satisfaction of his own mind, that the northern-most of the two, and the nearest, was a lateen-rigged craft, standing, close hauled, to the northward, across his course, and that the other was a square-rigged vessel, probably a brig, under easy sail, standing in the same direction that he was.
Then, came two or three Americans, who had been the common run of European and South American voyages, and one who had been in a "spouter," and, of course, had all the whaling stories to himself. Last of all, was a broad-backed, thick-headed boy from Cape Cod, who had been in mackerel schooners, and was making his first voyage in a square-rigged vessel.
These top-hampering structures over-burdened both ends and produced a regular see-saw, as the Spanish crew of 1893 found to their cost when pitching horribly through a buffeting head sea. The Santa Maria, like most 'Spaniards, had a lateen-rigged mizzen. But the Grande Hermine had no mizzen, only the square-rigged mainmast, foremast, and bowsprit.
The corvette stood down the coast, a bright look-out being kept both for native dhows and square-rigged vessels, of which not a few Brazilians, Spaniards, and Americans were known to be engaged in the nefarious traffic.
He now listened with them, but after some time, hearing nothing, was inclined to think that they had been deceived by their fancy. Murray thought not, and, keeping his eyes on the point from which he believed the sounds had come, was almost certain that he could distinguish the sails of a square-rigged vessel passing at no great distance off, standing in towards the coast.
Word Of The Day