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قراءة كتاب The Penang Pirate and, The Lost Pinnace
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The Penang Pirate and, The Lost Pinnace
water that long before mid-day she had passed through the Bocca Tigris, or “tiger’s mouth” passage, and was out in the open ocean.
The nor’-east monsoon, which blows in the China seas as regularly as clockwork from October to April, and is the great trade-wind of the tea-ships, had nearly blown out its course; but still, for a time it was all in the Hankow Lin’s favour, and she went through the water at a fine rate. Although she was pretty well laden, and was rather deep for a vessel of her size, she walked along as if, as the sailors said, the girls at home had got hold of the tow-rope; and when the log was hove at noon she was going twelve knots with all sail set—not a bad pace that for a trader; but, in the old days, before steam transformed the trade through the Red Sea, these tea-ships were built for speed as well as freight room.
Sundown came, and the great orb of day set in a crescent of ruby light, making the sea like a gorgeous pantomime sea of molten gold as far as the eye could reach; and still the wind held up fair and strong, and the vessel careered over the expanse of ocean, that looked like living fire, without slackening her rate of progress, rising and falling to the waves with pendulum-like rhythm. And now night came on with its azure sky, sprinkled with innumerable stars all glorious with scintillating light, and the ship preserved the even tenor of her way; morning came again with its freshness of roseate hues and golden sun-risings, and purple mists, and transparent haze; and yet, onward—onward, without pause—she flew upon the wings of the wind like a great white dove released from some fowler’s snare and panting for the untrammelled freedom of the wide wide sea.
So day after day passed, and everything went on in regular routine on board, without any incident of note occurring to break the monotony of the voyage, the English sailors keeping to themselves, and the Malays apart, without either mixing or speaking with the others save when the duties of the ship called them into temporary association.
Kifong, the serang, however, they could see was wide-awake, and observant of all that went on around him. He was particularly anxious about the saloon and the passenger: and was continually trying to interrogate Snowball as to what went on within the privileged retreat, to which none else of the crew were admitted. What struck him more than anything else was the amount of food which the black cook was preparing, and carrying from the galley into the cabin.
“What for you takee so muchee prog, black-man, in dere for?” he said one day to Snowball, much to that individual’s indignation at the reference to his colour, which he always most studiously ignored.
“What for, mister yaller man? Why, for eat, sure!”
The Malay’s eyes gleamed like a serpent’s, and he showed his teeth like a snarling dog.
“Five men no eatee that much prog,” he said in an angry tone. “You tell one lie, black-man.”
“Lie yourself, yaller nigger,” said the darky. “You no tink dat four officers and de passenger gen’leman all eat muchee food; very good appeta-tites havee.”
The serang walked away from Snowball with a strong expression of doubt in his face, and ever afterwards seemed to bear a particular ill-will to the darky, laying traps to trip him up on his passage to and fro between the galley and the cabin when heavily laden with dishes for Mr Meredith’s gigantic meals.
Volume One--Chapter Four.
A Strange Sail.
The ship sailed on serenely, making from two hundred to two hundred and fifty knots in each twenty-four hours run—on some exceptional occasions clearing indeed as much as three hundred, to the great jubilation of the men—until one day, at noon, Captain Morton announced that they were in the same parallel as the Thousand Islands, and rapidly approaching the Straits of Sunda.
This wide channel of the sea, separating the islands of Java and Sumatra, forms one of the main gateways used by the vast number of ships that navigate the China Sea. All vessels bound thither from the western hemisphere pass either to the north or south of Sumatra, entering the Eastern Archipelago through the Straits of Singapore or else by the Straits of Sunda. Steam-vessels bound through the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean use the former route, and those rounding the Cape of Good Hope the latter. The strait is about seventy miles long, sixty miles broad at the south-west end, narrowing to thirteen miles at the north-east; and it was here that the terrible earthquake occurred in the summer of 1883, by which so many thousands of lives were sacrificed in a moment, through the submerging of some of the adjacent islands in the sea, a catastrophe only second in the annals of history to the earthquake at Lisbon in the last century.
Half-way through the strait, equidistant from the two shores, was a group of three islands, the largest of which was Krakatoa, four and a half miles long and three miles broad, its volcanic summit reaching to a height of 2623 feet above the sea-level, about ten times higher than the surrounding sea was deep. Between it and Java, although the floor of the strait was uneven, the channel was clear of dangers; on the Sumatra side were several islands and rocks, the two largest of which, Bezee and Sebooko, rose respectively 2825 feet and 1416 feet above the sea. The tremendous volcanic eruption, with the accompanying earthquake and inundation of the coasts which lately happened here—on the 26th August, 1883—has now wrought a fearful change here. According to all accounts, it appears that the chain of islets on the Sumatra side of the straits has been added to by at least sixteen volcanic craters rising within the eight miles of water that formerly separated them from Krakatoa. With so enormous an upheaval it would not be unnatural to expect the surrounding floor to be depressed; but when it is learned that the whole island of Krakatoa, containing about 8000 million cubic yards of material, has fallen in, and the greater part of it disappeared below the sea, the magnitude of the convulsion becomes more apparent, and it is the easier to realise the formation of the destructive volcanic wave that was thrown on the neighbouring shores. It is almost inconceivable that this island, with a mountain summit which rose nearly 2700 feet above the sea-level, should have been so extensively submerged; but it seems to have been in the very centre of the area of this vast earthquake, which convulsed the whole basin of the sea between Lampong Bay, on the south coast of Sumatra, and the opposite shores of Java, extending across a diameter of more than sixty geographical miles. The disturbance of the sea and consequent flooding of the shores, both those of Sumatra to the north and those of Java to the east of the volcanic outbreak, had the most destructive effects upon the Dutch settlements at Telok Betong, at the head of the bay in Sumatra, and likewise in Java, at the well-known commercial port of Anjer, where all homeward-bound ships of every nation were accustomed to call in passing the straits to obtain needful supplies for the voyage across the Indian Ocean; and where also, it may be mentioned, Java sparrows, those delicate little feathered creatures that might teach wiser humanity a lesson in their touching fondness for each other, used to be purchased by sailors for presents to their friends at home—though few, alas, of the poor “sparrows” ever reached England alive of the thousands brought away from their native clime, the majority dying at sea on the first cold night!
The homeward-bound voyager, too, who passes the Straits of Sunda, is sometimes fortunate enough to witness, at the western extremity of the channel, a strange yet beautiful optical illusion, probably akin to the mirage of the desert. It presents a magnificent display of natural architecture, commencing at one particular