Explore "The Privateer" by Josephine Tey on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The harbour at Port Royal lay like a great round mirror under the benevolent sky, and on its surface a score of ships turned with a lazy acquiescence to greet the incoming tide. The town on its spit of land was repeated in the still water, candy-pink and mint-green, like a sweetmeat. Port Royal in Jamaica had the reputation of being the most riotous town in the islands, with a drinking-den for every five of its inhabitants, but in the limpid light it looked fresh and innocent and pretty. The inhabitants, in any case, did not largely frequent the much-quoted drinking-dens; the inhabitants were enlisted merely for statistics' sake. The pleasures of the town were for sailors ashore, and when no ships lay in the wide lagoon between the town and the mainland, Port Royal lay quiet and parochial under the sun, almost as innocent as it looked.
In the comparative coolness of the cabin in his ship _Endeavour_ Captain Mansfield sat drinking madeira and being gloomy about his prospects.