FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   >>  
in smuggling, piracy, and "blackbirding" (which is kidnapping Gilbert Islanders and selling them to the coffee-planters of Central America), but that she maintained special relations with Satan, founded on the power of mysterious charms which her skipper was supposed to have procured from some mysterious source and was known to employ on occasion. Beyond the information which his manifests and clearance papers divulged, nothing of his supposed shady operations could be learned either from him or his crew; for his sailors, like him, were a strangely silent lot--all sharp, keen-eyed young fellows who never drank and who kept to themselves when in port. An uncommon circumstance was that there were never any vacancies in the crew, except one that happened as the result of Freeman's last visit to Rabaya, and it came about in the following remarkable manner: Freeman, like most other men who follow the sea, was superstitious, and he ascribed his fair luck to the charms which he secretly procured from Rabaya. It is now known that he visited the mystic whenever he came to the port of San Francisco, and there are some to-day who believe that Rabaya had an interest in the supposed buccaneering enterprises of the "Blue Crane." Among the most intelligent and active of the "Blue Crane's" crew was a Malay known to his mates as the Flying Devil. This had come to him by reason of his extraordinary agility. No monkey could have been more active than he in the rigging; he could make flying leaps with astonishing ease. He could not have been more than twenty-five years old, but he had the shrivelled appearance of an old man, and was small and lean. His face was smooth-shaved and wrinkled, his eyes deep-set and intensely black and brilliant. His mouth was his most forbidding feature. It was large, and the thin lips were drawn tightly over large and protruding teeth, its aspect being prognathous and menacing. Although quiet and not given to laughter, at times he would smile, and then the expression of his face was such as to give even Freeman a sensation of impending danger. It was never clearly known what was the real mission of the "Blue Crane" when she sailed the last time from San Francisco. Some supposed that she intended to loot a sunken vessel of her treasure; others that the enterprise was one of simple piracy, involving the killing of the crew and the scuttling of the ship in mid-ocean; others that a certain large consignment
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   >>  



Top keywords:
supposed
 

Rabaya

 

Freeman

 
active
 

piracy

 

Francisco

 

procured

 

mysterious

 

charms

 

scuttling


shaved

 
smooth
 

agility

 
wrinkled
 
forbidding
 

killing

 

brilliant

 

intensely

 

shrivelled

 

astonishing


flying

 

rigging

 

consignment

 

feature

 

monkey

 
twenty
 

appearance

 

sensation

 

impending

 

expression


vessel

 

danger

 
mission
 

sailed

 

sunken

 

laughter

 

tightly

 

enterprise

 

protruding

 

intended


involving
 
simple
 

menacing

 

Although

 

treasure

 
prognathous
 

extraordinary

 
aspect
 
smuggling
 

blackbirding