Ghost stories; Male friendship -- Fiction; Short stories; Soldiers -- Fiction
"Now was the time--nothing being left alive upon the transport--for my
father to tell of the sloop he'd seen driving upon the Manacles. And
when he got a hearing, though the most were set upon salvage, and
believed a wreck in the hand, so to say, to be worth half a dozen they
couldn't see, a good few volunteered to start off with him and have a
look. They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to be seen on the Manacles
nor anywhere upon the sea. One or two was for calling my father a liar.
'Wait till we come to Dean Point,' said he. Sure enough, on the far side
of Dean Pont they found the sloop's mainmast washing about with half a
dozen men lashed to it, men in red jackets, every mother's son drowned
and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or four
bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-drum
and all; and near by part of a ship's gig, with 'H.M.S. Primrose' cut
on the stern-board. From this point on the shore was littered thick with
wreckage and dead bodies--the most of them marines in uniform--and in
Godrevy Cove, in particular, a heap of furniture from the captain's
cabin, and among it a water-tight box, not much damaged, and full of
papers, by which, when it came to be examined, next day, the wreck was
easily made out to be the 'Primrose,' of eighteen guns, outward bound
from Portsmouth, with a fleet of transports for the Spanish war--thirty
sail, I've heard, but I've never heard what became of them. Being
handled by merchant skippers, no doubt they rode out the gale, and
reached the Tagus safe and sound. Not but what the captain of the
'Primrose'--Mein was his name--did quite right to try and club-haul his
vessel when he found himself under the land; only he never ought to have
got there, if he took proper soundings. But it's easy talking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account