The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1889-11-21

Written for the Banner.
LA MULET'TE.
AMMO 1914
BY w. CLARK RUSSELL,
Author of "The Frozen Pirate, "The
Death Ship" etc.


PART L.
All day long there had been a pleas
ant breeze blowing from beam; but
as the sun sank into the west the wind
fined into light, delicate curls of shad-
DIV upon the sea that, at the hour of
shutdown, when the great luminary
hung poised like vast target of
aaming gold upon the ocean-line,
turned into surface of quicksilver
through which there ran light, wide,
ong drawn heave of swell regular as a
respiration, rhythmic as the sway of
cradle to the song of a mother.
The ship was an Indiaman named
the Ruby; the time long ago, as human
life runs, in this century nevertheless,
when the old traditional conditions of
Bea-life were yet current-the round
about Indian voyage by way of the
cape-the SLAYER sneaking across the
brassy parallels of the Middle Passage
the piccaroon in the waters of the
Antilles lodging the fiery slope whose
adamantine grin of cannons was rem
aered horribly significant to the eye of
the greasy pirate by the cross of Grim
Bon under whose meteoric folds the
broadside Numbered.
/ was passenger aboard the Ruby,
making the voyage to India for my
pleasure. The fac8 was, being a man of
independent means I was without any
sort of business to detain me at home
Your continental excursion was but a
two-penny business to me. Here was
= l. Ill #
navigated whilst one was young with
spirits rendered waterproof by health.
Time enough, l thought, to amble
about Europe when Australia began
TO look long way off. So this was
my third voyage. One l had made to
Sydney and Melbourne, and second
to China, and now | was bound to
Bombay with some kind of notion be-
yond of striking across into Persia,
thence to Arabia and SO home by way
of the classic shores of the Mediter-
ranean.
Well, it happened this 18th of June
TO be the captains birthday. H is
name was Bow; he would be fifty
three years old that day. he told US,
and as he had used the sea since the
age of thirteen he was to be taken as
man who knew his business. And a
better sailor there never was, and never
also was there a person who looked
less like sailor. If ever you have
seen print of Charles Lamb you have
had an excellent likeness of Capt.
Bow before you-a pale, spare Great
ure of a somewhat Hebraic cast of
countenance, with a brow undarkened
by any stains of weather. His memory
went far back; he had served as mate
in John Company's ships, had known
Commodore Dance who beat Linois
and spoke of him as perfect gentle
man; deplored the gradual decay of
the British sailor, and would talk with
a wistful CLEAN in his eye of the grand
and generous policy of the Leaden-
hall-street directors in allowing to their
captains as much cubic capacity in
the ships they commanded for their
own private use and emolument as
would furnish out the dimensions of a
considerable smack.
1t was his birthday and long ago all
of us passengers had made up our
minds to celebrate the occasion by a
supper, n dance on deck and by OBJ
tanning permission for Jack forward to
have ball on condition that we should
be allowed to ply him with drink
enough to keep his heels nimble, and
no more. We were in the Indian ocean
climbing north, somewhere upon the
longitude of Amsterdam island, SO for
midahIe was the casting made in the
hne old times. The latitude think
was about IL degrees south, though the
sun hung well in the north. Spite OF
awnings and wet swabs the planks OF
the deck seemed TO Jingle like tim
through the thin soles of your boots
If you put your nose into an open sky
light the air that rose drove you back
with a sense of suffocation, so heavily
was the fiery stagnation of it loaded
with smells of food and of the cabin in
terror, though there never was a sweet.
Or and breezier cuddy with it's big
windows and windsail-heels whom the
thermometer gave the place the least
chance. But when the sun was nearly
setting some sailors quietly went aft
and fell to work to make ballroom
of the poop. They took the bunting
out of the signal locker and stretched
it along the ridge-ropes betwixt the
awning and the rail until it was like
standing inside huge Chinese lantern
for color.
They hung the ships lamps along
in rows, reused up the piano from its
moorings in the cuddy, embeliished the
tops of the hencoops with red haizt
and in fifty directions not worth the
trouble of indicating, so decorated and
glorihed the after-end of the ship thai
when the lamps came 10 be lighted
with strea&s of pearl-colored moon
shine e,littering upon the deck betwixi
the interstices of the signal flags, and
movement enough in the tranquil lift
of the great fabric to she swell to fill
the eye with alterations of swaying
shadow and CLEAN, this ballroom OF
ing of milky softness and walls of ra
diant banners was more like som,
fairy sea vision than reality, espe
cially with the glimpse You caught o
the vast silent ocean solitude outsid,
with its sky of lowering stars and {
stiffness as of dead world in the at
mosphere-such q contrast, by heaven
to the revelry within the shipboar.
pavilion, when once She music has
struck up and the forms of women in
white gowns fluffing MP about then
like soapsuds swimming round tn
decks in the embrace of their partners
that kind of shudder 'Ksluld come int
you with the mere thinking of the diff
ference between the tw,s things.
The music was good: there was
steerage passenger, lady, who playe,
ths piano incomparably well; thel