Explore "The Blighting of Sharkey" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sharkey, the abominable Sharkey, was out again. After two years of the Coromandel coast, his black barque of death, _The Happy Delivery_, was prowling off the Spanish Main, while trader and fisher flew for dear life at the menace of that patched fore-topsail, rising slowly over the violet rim of the tropical sea.
As the birds cower when the shadow of the hawk falls athwart the field, or as the jungle folk crouch and shiver when the coughing cry of the tiger is heard in the night-time, so through all the busy world of ships, from the whalers of Nantucket to the tobacco ships of Charleston, and from the Spanish supply ships of Cadiz to the sugar merchants of the Main, there spread the rumour of the black curse of the ocean.