The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1895-11-23

est repairs. Sailing Directions.
Her nationality was British, but o
will not find her house-flag in the list of
u mercantile marine. She was q
nine : hundred = ton, iron, schooner
rugged, screw, cargo-boat, differing en-
t~ernally in no way from any other
tramp Of the sea. But it is with steam
ers as it is with men. There are those
who will for a consideration sail eX-
tremely close to the wind; and, in the
present state of our fallen world, such
people n such steamers ave their
use. From the hour that the Aglaia
first entered the Clyde-new, shiny and
innocent-with a quart of cheap cham
payne trickling down her cut-water-
Fate and her owner, who was also her
captain, decreed that she should deal
with embarrassed crowned heads, flee
Ing presidents, ~financiers of over-eX-
tended ability, women to whom change
of air was Imperative, and the lesser
law-breaking powers. Her career led
her sometimes into the Admiralty
courts, where the sworn statements of
her skipper filled his brethren with
envy. The mariner cannot tell or act a
lie in the face of the sea or mislead a
tempest, but, as lawyers have discov-
cred, he makes up for chances Withheld
when he returns to shore an affidavit
in either hand.
The Aglaia figured with distinction
In the great MIackinaw salvage case.
1t was her first slip from virtue, n
she learned how to change her name,
but not her heart, inc to run across
the sea. AS the Guiding Light she was
very badly wanted in a South Ameri-
can port for the little matter of enter
ing the harbor at full speed, colliding
with a valuable coal-hulk and the
states only man-of-war, just as that
man-of-war was going to coal. she
put to sea without explanations,
though three forts fired at her for half
an hour. AS the Julia M'Gregor she
had been concerned in picking up from
a aft certain gentlemen who shoule
have stayed in Noumea. but who pre-
ferred making themselves vastly NC
pleasant to authority in quite ~
other quarter of the world; and as the
Shah-in-Shah she had been Overtaken
on the high seas. indecently full of mu-
nitions of a by the cruiser of an agi-
tated power at issue with its ~neighbor.
That time she was very nearly sunk,
and her riddled hull gave eminent law
yers of two countries great profit. Al
snr q season she r~eapDeared as the
Martin Hunt, painted n dull slate color
with pure saffron tunnels and boats
of robin's-egg blue, engaging in the
Odessa trade till she was invited (and
the invitation could not well be dis
IcStIucuD " htNt' iva ~
Sea ports altogether.
She had ridden through many waves
of depression in the shipping business.
Freights might drop out of sight. sea-
mems unions throw spanners nuts
at certificated masters. or
combine till cargo persisted on the dock
head. but the boat of manyn names came
and went, busy, alert and i~nconspicu-
Gus always. Her skipper. who in a
spasm of pride had compared her to a
servant girl in q house of ill-fame, made
no complaint of hard times, n port
officers observed that her crew signed
again aboard her with the regularity
of Atlantic liner boatswains. Her name
she changed as occasion called; her
well-paid crew never, n a large per-
centage Of the profits of her voyage was
spent with an open hand on her engine
room. She never troubled the d
writer's, and very seldom stopped to
talk with a signal station, for her bust
ness was urgent and private.
But an end came to her tradings, and
she persisted in this n Deep
peace brOoded over Europe. Asia,
Africa, America, Australia and Poly
nesia. The powers dealt together more
or less honestly; banks paid their depos-
itors to the hour; diamonds of price
came safely to the hands of their own
ers; republics rested content with their
dictators; diplomats found no one
whose presence in the least incom-
NODDED them; and monarchs lived openly
with their lawfully welded wives. it
was as though the hole earth had put
on it's best Sunday bib and tucker; and
business was very bad for the Martin
Hunt The great, virtuous calm en-
quilted her, slate sides, yellow funnels
and all, but cast up in another hemis-
phere the steam whaler Haliotis. black
and rusty, with q manure-colored fun
mel, a litter of dingy white boats. and
an enormous stove, or furnace for burn
ing blubber on her forward well-deck.
There could be no doubt that her trip
was successful, for she lay at several
ports not too well known, and the
smoke of her trying-out insulted h
beaches.
Anon she departed at the speed of
the average London four-wheeler, and
entered a semi-island sea. warm, still
inc blue, which is, perhaps, the most
strictly preserved water in the world.
There she stayed for three months, IN
der sail for the most part, and the great
stars of those mild skies beheld her
playing puss-in-the-corner among is
1andS where whales are never found
All that time she smelt a~bominably, and
the smell, though fishy, was not whole
some. In the middle of the tenth week
Calamity descended upOn her from
island of Pygang-Watai. and she fed
while her crew jeered at a fat black and
brown gunboat putting far behind. They
knew to the ast revolution the capacity
of every boat on those seas that they
were anxious to avoid. A British ship
with a good conscience does not. as a
rule, flee from the man-of-war of a for
eign power, and it is also a breach Of
etiquette to stop and search British
ships at sea. These things the skipper
of the Haliotis did not pause to prove,
but held on at an inspiriting eleven |
knots an hour till nightfall. One thing
only had he overlooked.
The power that kept an expensive
steam-patrol moving up and down those
waters 1.-THE skipper had lodged the two
ra