Explore "A Son of the Sea" by John Arthur Barry on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
ONE morning, in about 20° South, those on the Cumberland espied a faint stain of smoke athwart the sky right astern. But it was past noon ere they made the vessel out to be a small, white-painted, paddle-wheel steamer that came panting, puffing, and churning along just a little faster than they were sailing themselves. At last with feeble puffs, as if rendered quite breathless by the hoarse roarings of her long chase, she caught them and chunked alongside with four or five people on her bridge all chattering at once. She was a Spanish gun boata dirty, ill- kept, sloppy, old tub armed with four or five guns that might have been at Trafalgar, so obsolete were they and their furniture.
"De sip!" hailed an officer in a dingy, white drill suit ornamented with big silver buttons.