Tom Wallis by Louis Becke — Read

Thirty miles to the eastward of Breaksea Spit, which lies off Sandy Cape, on the coast of Queensland, a little tubby and exceedingly disreputable-looking brig of about two hundred tons burden was floundering and splashing along before a fresh southerly breeze, and a short and jumpy head swell. By the noise she made when her bluff old bows plunged into a sea and brought her up shaking, and groaning, and rolling as she rose to it and tumbled recklessly down the other side, one would have thought that the Lady Alicia was a two thousand ton ship, close hauled under a press of canvas, and thrashing her way through the water at thirteen or fourteen knots. Sometimes, when she was a bit slow in rising, a thumping smack on her square old-fashioned stern would admonish her to get up and be doing, and with a protesting creak and grind from every timber in her sea-worn old frame, blending into what sounded like a heart-broken sigh, she would make another effort, and drop down into the trough again with a mighty splash of foam shooting out from her on every side, and a rattling of blocks, and flapping and slapping of her ancient, threadbare, and wondrously-patched canvas.

Aft, on the short, stumpy poop, a short stumpy man with a fiery-red face, keen blue eyes, and snow-white hair, was standing beside the helmsman, smoking, and watching the antics of the venerable craft -- of which he was master and owner -- with unconcealed pride. His age was about the same as the brig, a little over fifty years; and this was not the only point in which they resembled each other, for their appearance and characteristics bore a marked similarity in many respects.