The Early Life of Old Jack (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 64 THE WEST INDIES. CHAPTER III. THE WEST INDIES. Land! land on the starboard-bow!" was shouted from the foretop-mast cross-trees, where several of our men had been, in spite of a pretty hot scorching sun, since dawn, on the look-out for it. " Who saw it first ?" asked the captain, who was always more anxious when nearing the coast than at any other time. " Tom Tillson," was the answer from aloft. " A glass of grog for you, Tom,, if it proves to be the land, and you have kept your eyes open to good purpose !" said the captain, preparing himself to go to the mast-head, where the mates followed him. They were satisfied that Tom had fairly won his glass of grog, I suppose; for, after some time, when I went aloft, I saw a high blue-pointed mountain rising out of the sparkling sea, with ranges of lower hills beneath it. As we drew in with the shore, we could distinguish the fields of sugar cane, surrounded by lime-trees, and the white houses of the planters, and the huts of the negroes; and I thought that I should very much like to take a run among the lofty palmetto and the wild cotton-trees and the fig-trees, and to chase the frolick- some monkeys I had heard speak of among theirSt. Christopher's. 65 branches. A light silvery mist hung over the whole scene, and made it look doubly beautiful . I asked Peter what land it was, for I thought that we had arrived at America itself. He laughed, and said that it was only a little island called St. Christopher's; and that he'd heard say that it was first discovered by the great admiral who had found out America, aad that he had called it after his own name. Peter, though he could not read, had a great store of information, which he had picked up from various people. He was not always quite correct; and that was from...