A Son Of The Sun. Джек Лондон

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      “It’s Sydney Heads for you,” Grief said. “And then what?”

      “I’m coming back with you for that two hundred thousand,” Pankburn answered. “In the meantime I’m going to build an island schooner. Also, I’m going to call those guardians of mine before the court to show cause why my father’s money should not be turned over to me. Show cause? I’ll show them cause why it should.”

      He swelled his biceps proudly under the thin sleeve, reached for the two black stewards, and put them above his head like a pair of dumbbells.

      “Come on! Swing out on that fore-boom-tackle!” Carlsen shouted from aft, where the mainsail was being winged out.

      Pankburn dropped the stewards and raced for it, beating a Rapa sailor by two jumps to the hauling part.

      Chapter Three – THE DEVILS OF FUATINO

      Of his many schooners, ketches and cutters that nosed about among the coral isles of the South Seas, David Grief loved most the Rattler– a yacht-like schooner of ninety tons with so swift a pair of heels that she had made herself famous, in the old days, opium-smuggling from San Diego to Puget Sound, raiding the seal-rookeries of Bering Sea, and running arms in the Far East. A stench and an abomination to government officials, she had been the joy of all sailormen, and the pride of the shipwrights who built her. Even now, after forty years of driving, she was still the same old Rattler, fore-reaching in the same marvellous manner that compelled sailors to see in order to believe and that punctuated many an angry discussion with words and blows on the beaches of all the ports from Valparaiso to Manila Bay.