Читать книгу The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" or, Life and Adventures in the Orient - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 63

Table of Contents

Leaving Home—Our Pilgrimage Begun—Sights and Scenes on Deck—“Life on the Ocean Wave”—Out at Sea—The Traveller’s Little World—Feeling Queer Inside!—Delights of Sea-sickness—Reminiscences of a Jolly Old Boy—What became of the Judge—Bringing up his Liver!—Too Big for his Berth—Sleeping in a Second-hand Coffin—A Race with a Lemon—The Leg of Mutton Dance—Eccentric Conduct of a Boiled Turkey—Too Much Sauce!—“Dressing” the Judge’s Trowsers—Alone at Sea—A Funny Conspiracy—Fate of a Timid Man—Confidence Betrayed—The Young Man from the Country—His Wisdom and his Woes—Drinking Petroleum—The Judge Turns Joker—Who Owns the Ocean Steamers.

NEVER have I sailed out of New-York harbor on a finer day than when, in the spring of 1873, I started on that pilgrimage of which this book is to be the record.

It was late in April, the sky was clear, and the atmosphere had that balmy softness which we find in the tropics much oftener than in more northern latitudes. Looking up the Hudson and down the widening estuary toward Staten Island, one could see a delicate haze that skirted the horizon and faintly mellowed the lines that otherwise might have presented a suggestion of harshness. The picturesque life of the harbor was at its fullest activity; ocean and river steamers were moving here and there, and white-winged ships coming home from long voyages or going out to battle with the winds and waves, were in the grasp of powerful tugs that fumed and fretted as they ploughed the waters with their helpless charges. Thousands of smaller craft dotted and stippled the beautiful bay which is the pride and glory of the commercial metropolis of America; and the forest of masts hanging over the wharves at the city’s edge spread its leafless limbs in liberal profusion.