Book Description

Excerpt from The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship "Bacchante," 1879-1882, Vol. 2: The East; Japan, China, Straits Settlements, Ceylon, Egypt, Palestine, the Mediterranean Monday. Thermometer the air feels moister, and it is more cloudy. After the dinner hour the admiral formed the squadron into single column in line ahead, for we are passing what is supposed to be the Pandora bank, though when we sound we get no bottom at 130 fathoms there evidently are shallows hereabouts, judging from the clouds that gather over the surface of the water, warmed by the sun, and the troops of birds on the water as if after fish. We are still making between five and six knots, but there are many rain-squalls, and after each of these the wind lulls and then puffs up again, and so it continues. All night the rain comes down in torrents, everything is reeking with moisture. Sept. 14th. - A finer morning and the sun out. Thermometer 80° on deck under the awnings, but down in the gun-room it was over for all our ports are kept barred in. At drill after evening quarters the flagship made the signal man overboard, and hove to, and so did the Tourmaline, and both we and she got our cutters ready for lowering. The flagship recalled her own boat and made signal man saved. We heard afterwards he had not really fallen overboard but only from a little way aloft, and brought up luckily without injury in the chains. The trades are falling very light now, and we crossed the tenth parallel this evening. A poor little sandpiper alighted on the spanker-boom and another in the cutter, looking very thin and tired. The banana bunches in the boats are ripe. After sunset there was more rain. It is just a year to-day since we left Marlborough House. Sept. 15th. - Becalmed nearly the Whole day with the ship's head pointing towards New Guinea; a gentle puff of air now and then, but the sun very hot, and no rain in the daytime. At pm. We saw two small sharks swimming round the ship: they were each about five or six feet long. The paymaster got a hook and some pork, put it overboard astern off the poop while he was watching the Shark on the starboard quarter, slowly swimming round three or four yards off, and was holding the line lightly in his hand, suddenly from under the port side of the counter up came another shark he had not perceived, and hooked himself on with a jerk that made the Old man sing out that he was nearly being hauled overboard. The shark was afterwards hauled up by the bluejackets on the glacis, rolled up in canvass, and taken forward, but first, While the hook was being extracted, a gymnastic club had to be put in his jaws to force and hold them open. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.