The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
it up and lower the hams to his brother below. They caught three little
sucking-pigs, and towed them alive through the waves, round the point of
their landing-place, where they arrived half drowned. They were put in an
enclosure, and fed on green stuff and penguin’s eggs—good feeding for a
delicate little porker. Attempting on another occasion to tow a couple in
the same way, the unfortunate pigs met a watery grave in the endeavour to
weather the point, and one of the brothers barely escaped, with some few
injuries, through a terrible surf which was beating on their part of the
coast. Part of their time was passed in a cave during the cold weather.
When the _Challenger_ arrived their only rifle had burst in two places,
and was of little use, while their musket was completely burst in all
directions, and was being used as a blow-pipe to freshen the fire when it
got low. Their only knives had been made by themselves from an old saw.
Their library consisted of eight books and an atlas, and these, affording
their only literary recreation for two years, they knew almost literally
by heart. When they first landed they had a dog and two pups, which they,
doubtless, hoped would prove something like companions. The dogs almost
immediately left, and made for the penguin rookeries, where they killed
and worried the birds by hundreds. One of them became mad, and the
brothers thought it best to shoot the three of them. Captain Nares gave
the two Crusoes a passage to the Cape, where one of them obtained a good
situation; the other returned to Germany, doubtless thinking that about a
couple of dozen seal-skins—all they obtained—was hardly enough to reward
them for their two years’ dreary sojourn on Inaccessible Island.
[Illustration]
Chapter III.
THE MEN OF THE SEA.
The great Lexicographer on Sailors—The Dangers of the Sea—How Boys
become Sailors—Young Amyas Leigh—The Genuine Jack
Tar—Training-Ships _versus_ the old Guard-Ships—“Sea-goers and
Waisters”—The Training Undergone—Routine on Board—Never-ending
Work—Ship like a Lady’s Watch—Watches and “Bells”—Old Grogram and
Grog—The Sailor’s Sheet Anchor—Shadows in the Seaman’s Life—The
Naval Cat—Testimony and Opinion of a Medical Officer—An
Example—Boy Flogging in the Navy—Shakespeare and Herbert on
Sailors and the Sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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