Read "Sandi, the King-Maker" by Edgar Wallace online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A LONG broad-beamed boat was pushing her way through the black waters which swirled and eddied against her bow. She was painted a dazzling white, and her two high smoke-stacks were placed one behind the other, giving her an appearance of stolidity which was very satisfactory to the young man who had constituted himself her chief officer. The open lower deck was a few feet over the water-line, and seemed at a distance to be decorated with bright scarlet poppies. Near at hand these resolved themselves into the new red tarbooshes of the native soldiers who crowded the iron deck. Above was another deck, from which opened the doors and latticed windows of a dozen cabins. Two or three deep-seated wicker chairs and a light table were disposed on the clear space under the big awning aft, but this space reserved for the hours of leisure was deserted. Three men in white duck trousers and coatless stood on the little navigating bridge where the shining brass telegraphs stood, and behind them, raised on a grated dais, a native, bare to the waist, held a polished wheel.
The ship was named Zaire II, and the big searchlight on the bridge, the quick-firing guns which were swung out over each side, the tiny ensign which fluttered at her one mast, all these things stood for the expectation of war.