A Voyage at Anchor (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII THE GHOST We found life on board of our old hulk, anchored out in the Small Downs, very much fuller of diversion and incident than even I, with all my experience of the ever-changing conditions of the sea, had expected. In the first place the novelty of the scheme raised curiosity, and curiosity was the means of bringing us quite as much society as ever we wanted. Had we taken furnished apartments ashore, in the usual way, probably we should not have made a single acquaintance; as it was, I believe that most of the little circle of what is known as "desirable people" living in Deal must have called upon us at one time or another during our voyage at anchor off the old town. Then we had all the pastimes which are afforded by shipboard life to fall back upon when the time hung on our hands, such as boating, fishing, and the innumerable devices for killing leisure at sea which have been invented by generations of bored ocean-going passengers. After about the first fortnight of our existence on board the Calenture, we had all of us grown very much attached to the old hulk, and more so to the happy hours of our summer holiday. With the exception of the brief gale I have already described, the weather in all this while remained gloriously fine, the sea as calm and the sky as blue as though we floated upon the waters of the Adriatic at the drowsiest time of the year. We heard no more from either Elizabeth or Emma of their wish to be set ashore, and I divined the reason of this easily enough when my wife told me, with a laugh, two or three days afterwards, that she had discovered the cook was "gone" upon our leading seaman, James Spry. We met with one little incident which disturbed us a bit whilst it lasted, just about this time. A big foreign ship h...