Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea: Their Rovings, Cruises, Escapades, and Fierce Battling Upon the Ocean for Patriotism and for Treasure

Capa
L. C. Page, 1911 - 398 páginas
My dear Boys: -The sea stretches away from the land, -a vast sheet of unknown possibilities. Now gray, now blue, now slate colored, whipped into a thousand windrows by the storm, churned into a seething mass of frothing spume and careening bubbles, it pleases, lulls, then terrorizes and dismays. Perpetually intervening as a barrier between peoples and their countries, the wild, sobbing ocean rises, falls and roars in agony. It is a stoppage to progress and contact between races of men and warring nations. In the breasts of all souls slumbers the fire of adventure. To penetrate the unknown, to there find excitement, battle, treasure, so that one's future life can be one of ease and indolence-for this men have sacrificed the more stable occupations on land in order to push recklessly across the death-dealing billows. They have battled with the elements; they have suffered dread diseases; they have been tormented with thirst; with a torrid sun and with strange weather; they have sorrowed and they have sinned in order to gain fame, fortune, and renow
 

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Página 343 - He was the mildest mannered man That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat. With such true breeding of a gentleman, You never- could divine his real thought. No courtier could, and scarcely woman can Gird more deceit within a petticoat. Pity he loved adventurous life's variety, He was so great a loss to good society.
Página 237 - The heroes' sepulchre. Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead! Dear as the blood ye gave; No impious footstep here shall tread The herbage of your grave; Nor shall your glory be forgot While Fame her record keeps, Or Honor points the hallowed spot Where Valor proudly sleeps. Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone In deathless song shall tell, When many a vanished age hath flown, The story how ye fell; Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, Nor Time's remorseless doom.
Página 237 - No braying horn nor screaming fife At dawn shall call to arms. Their shivered swords are red with rust, Their plumed heads are bowed ; Their haughty banner, trailed in dust, Is now their martial shroud. And plenteous funeral tears have washed The red stains from each brow, And the proud forms, by battle gashed, Are free from anguish now.
Página 82 - Where what he most doth value must be won. Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray; Who, not content that former worth stand fast, Looks forward, persevering to the last, From well to better, daily self-surpast...
Página 44 - Captain's return brought unto his [friends ?] did so speedily pass over all the church, and surpass their minds with desire and delight to see him that very few or none remained with the preacher, all hastening to see the evidence of God's love and blessing towards our Gracious Queen and country, by the fruit of our Captain's labour and success.
Página 360 - I have the honor of your excellency's answer, which I am persuaded can be dictated only by wisdom. Should your answer not be favorable to my ardent desires, I declare to you that I will instantly leave the country, to avoid the imputation of having cooperated towards an invasion on this point, which cannot fail to take place, and to rest secure in the acquittal of my conscience.
Página 282 - Those Englishmen gave three loud hurrahs from the deck of their covered ark, And we answered back by a solid broadside from the decks of our patriot bark. "Out booms ! out booms !" our skipper cried, "out booms and give her sheet...
Página 172 - The twilight hours, like birds, flew by, As lightly and as free ; Ten thousand stars were in the sky, Ten thousand on the sea : , For every wave with dimpled face, That leaped upon the air, Had caught a star in its embrace And held it trembling there.
Página 281 - But he only laughed as he glanced aloft at a white and silvery track. The mid-tide meets in the channel waves that flow from shore to shore, And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Featherstone to Dunmore And that sterling light in Tusker Rock where the old bell tolls each hour, And the beacon light that shone so bright was quench'd on Waterford Tower. The nightly robes...
Página 234 - you must excuse the unfitness of my dress to come aboard a strange ship ; but really I left my own in such a hurry that I had no time to stay for a change.

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