Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
You can fancy land heaving in sight after thrice as many weeks as
you've been at sea, ladies; or the view of a ship to a man that's
been long laid up in bed ashore; or a gulp of fresh water in a sandy
desert,--but I question if any of them matches your first glimpse of
James Town from the roadstead, like a bright piece of fairy-work in
the mouth of the narrow brown valley, after seeing desolation enough
to make you wish for a clear horizon again. More especially this
time, when all the while one couldn't help bringing to mind one's
notion of the French Emperor, how, not long ago, the sight of the
French coast, or a strange frigate over the Channel swell, used to
make us think of him far ashore, with half the earth for his own,
and millions of soldiers. We reefers down in the cockpit would save
our grog to drink confusion to Napoleon, and in a rough night near a
lee-shore, it was look alive aloft, or choose betwixt cold brine and
the clutch of a gendarme hauling you to land. I do believe we looked
upon him as a sort of god, as Captain Wallis did in the Temple; every
ship or gun-boat we saw taken, or had a hand in the mauling of, why,
'twas for the sheer sake of the thing, and scarce by way of harm to
Boney; while nothing like danger, from breakers on the lee-bow to a
November gale, but had seemingly a taste of him. None of us any more
thought of bringing him to this, than we did of his marching into
London, or of a French frigate being able to rake our old Pandora in
a set-to on green water or blue, with us to handle her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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