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James B. Connolly
Wide Courses
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664570574
Table of Contents
The Seizure of the "Aurora Borealis"
ILLUSTRATIONS
My boy wanted to do the divin', but 'twas me that went down
He brings out the blue-book and shows the boson
Sam made a couple of tremendous swipes, and then down went the Aurora's captain and one of his crew
By and by he caught an answering call
After a long look I saw that he did not resume his narrative. By that I knew that the stranger was troubling him
There she was, the Dancing Bess, holding a taut bowline to the eastward. And there were the two frigates, but they might as well have been chasing a star
"Don't call me a mutineer, captain—I've disobeyed no order"
He said he hoped they'd meet again next day and bowed himself out
[pg 1]
The Wrecker
Sometimes the notion comes to me while I'm talkin' to people that maybe I don't make myself clear, and it's been so for some time now—the things I see in my mind fadin' away from me at times, like ships in a fog. And that's strange enough, too, if what people tell me so often is true—that it used to be so one time that the office clerks would correct their account-books by what I told 'em out of my head. But sometimes—not often—things come back to me, like to-day—maybe because 'tis a winter day and a gale o' wind drivin' the sea afore it in the bay below there. Things come to me then—like pictures—wind and sea and fog and the wrecks on a lee shore.
In my business—but of course you know—runnin' after wrecks, from Newfoundland to Cuba, I had to be days and maybe weeks away from home—which was no harm when I had no more home than a room in a sailor's boardin'-house, and no harm later with Sarah. Even if anything happened to me, I used to feel that Sarah—that's my [pg 4] first wife—Sarah'd still have the two lads to hearten her and keep her busy; but 'twas different with—but there, my mind's off again. …
Maybe some things—comforts, refinements—I might 'a' practised myself in, got used to 'em like, but could I see in those early days that I'd ever have a grand home—me who'd been cast away at fourteen—even if I'd had time? It was to be able to do without comforts—to make a pleasure out o' hardship—that meant success almost as much as knowin' the business. And I did know my business in those days—or people lied a lot. And it always meant more to me—the name of bein' the great wrecker—than all the money I made, and in those last few years I made plenty of it—I did that. Me who once slaved for six dollars a month as boy in a Bangor coaster. And I mind СКАЧАТЬ