Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1899-06-15
0NE TREE ISLAND,
By JOHN BLoUNDELLE-BURToN,
Copyright, 1899, by John Bloundelle-Bur
ton
CHAPTER 1.

"Matey," he said, as he rose and pu
his twisted bit of paper between tn,
bars OF the fire and lit his pipe, "tha
there's good yarn, specially for {
kings man what don t sail over pecoolal
seas, and don't deny it. But, this her,
being rough night and we all assem-
pied comfortable, l thinks as how 1 car
tell you one that II take the wind out Of
the sails of yourn, and this is how il
goes
1t was rough night outside as he
had said, and the old signboard of tbs
Ship and Fair Wind, the inn in which
we We're all sitting at Portsmouth, was
; creaking disinally in company with that
OF the signboard of the Kings Head
the head of his present gracious males
ty King George 1II-God bless him
opposite, and we certainly were all
most comfortable round the parlor fire.
Two marines, "king's men," as he had
somewhat CONTEMPORARY called them,
and two sailors of the same vessel they
We're on We're drinking bowl of punch
between them He who had spoken as
above was drinking hot rum, two or
three other Jack Tars of the trading
service We're drinking hot gin and wa
ter, and all were smoking.
alone was neither drinking nor
smoking, for, in truth, was then
nothing but beardless, not full grown
boy, who my dear mother-the Lord
rest her soul-would sometimes let sit
IN the parlor of the inn and hear the
stories told by the seafarers who used
our house, she being the landlady of
the Ship and Fair Wind. And perhaps
1T was because my father had been cast
away and lost in the seas off the Ber-
. mudas that listened always with such
very great eagerness to all the stories
that these rovers Of the ocean would
tell and hoped myself to be one of them
some day, and perhaps also because of
these very stories my mother allowed
me to sit in the room and harken to
them, she hoping always-dear, good
mother-that my fathers dreadful fate
! and these terrible stories of shipwrecks
battles by sea and land and awful en-
counters with savage beasts in the wa
ter and on the shore would drive from
out of my boyish head the hopes en-
tertained of myself being, some day,
great sailor But this they never did.
eyes, . he began, "this is how it
goes. And you, matey, as kings man,
listen most attentive. For never, in the
few seas as King George's-his health,
God bless him-vessels sail in, will
you have the prospect Of encountering
such an adventure as this here which
I'm a-going to tell. "
The marines and the kings sailors
smiled scoffingly at this remark, or at
least think they meant to do so, and
the sailors of the trading vessels assum-
ed a very superior look, as much as to
say, we are the real sailors who pillow
strange distant seas and visit farof
savage lands. and he himself, rugged,
weather beaten, scar faced man, who
had lost three fingers of his left hand,
lit again his pipe. took one more great
gulp of his rum and then proceeded
with his story. And I, gaping boy
though now, as l write this down,
man and the captain of my own ship,
trading between the port of London
and the Indies-was not his least spell
bound listener.
''It was more nor Is years agone,'
he now proceeded to tell us, "being, as
/ afterward heard, the very year when
old King George Whose memory
drink-died, that we was a-making for
Cambodia. in the gulf of Siam, where we
was trading for rice, or was in hopes Of
trading for rice, in exchange for the
English goods and stuffs we had on
board Our vessel the Loving Friend,
was ship about $40 tons burden, and
we carried II guns and 80 men, besides
the master, his wife and his boy me
being the bos'n. We had been out
from the port of Bristol more nor year
and half, a-trading in and out during
all that time, exchanging with one
country the goods what we took in an
other, but always keeping together
many bales Of English stuff, which we
purposed to exchange at the last port
at which we meant to trade, which was
the port of Cambodia. Well, we was
a-making for the gulf of Siam, or as l
should tell you, shipmates all, for the
China sea. we having come away from
New Guinea and the Papons, with
whom we'd done little trading in
beads and colored cloths. We was
through the Sooloo sea and likewise the
Mindoro sea, and observing easy the is
land Of Palawan a-lying north north
east, and being then in about the lati-
tude Of degrees Is minutes, and steer
ing away northeast by east, with a good
500 miles of open sea before us. By
good fortune for us the rains, that last
in these ATTITUDES from May till August,
was over, and the hot air of these here
regions was tempered by the gentle
wind that was blowing from the south.
west and attacking us easy on our course.
By good fortune l say, mates all, for
we had lost three on our men by the
calenture, two more was down with it,
and one man had been washed over
board, so that the ship was worked
short handed. and boon to us it were
to get that breeze a-blowing up off the
tops of the great mountain ridge that
runs through the island of Borneo.
$50 this way we was six good hands