Explore "Edward Barry" by Louis Becke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Very smart and clean did the _Mahina_ look as the dinghy ran alongside and Barry stepped on deck. Her newly-painted sides shone snow-white in the bright tropic sun, and her decks had been scrubbed and scrubbed again and again with soft pumice stone till they were as smooth to the touch as the breast of a sea-bird. Aloft, her brightly scraped spars and carefully tended running and standing gear matched her appearance below, and even the cabins had been thoroughly overhauled and repainted. The two large boats used during the pearling operations yet lay astern; for Barry, who, as Mrs. Tracey said, "thought of everything," had his own reasons for delaying to hoist them inboard.
"Leave them till the last thing to-morrow morning," he suggested to Rawlings, "as the men are having liberty to-day."