Explore "Enderby's Courtship" by Louis Becke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The two ghastly creatures sat facing each other in their wordless misery as the wind died away and the tattered remnants of the sail hung motionless after a last faint flutter. The Thing that sat aft -- for surely so grotesquely horrible a vision could not be a Man -- pointed with hands like the talons of a bird of prey to the purple outline of the island in the west, and his black, blood-baked lips moved, opened, and essayed to speak. The other being that, with bare and skinny arms clasped around its bony knees, sat crouched in the bottom of the boat, leaned forward to listen.
"Ducie Island, Enderby," said the first in a hoarse, rattling whisper; "no one on it; but water is there... and plenty of birds and turtle, and a few coconuts."