There Must Be A Middle
Way Somewhere, As There Must Be Somewhere An Unmarried Man With No
Position, Reputation, Or Other Vanity To Lose, Who Most Keenly Wants To
Find Out What His Palette Is Set For In This Life.
He will pack his
steamer-trunk and get into the open to wrestle with effects that he can
never reproduce.
All the same his will be a superb failure.
'CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS'
From Yokohama to Montreal is a long day's journey, and the forepart is
uninviting. In three voyages out of five, the North Pacific, too big to
lie altogether idle, too idle to get hands about the business of a
storm, sulks and smokes like a chimney; the passengers fresh from Japan
heat wither in the chill, and a clammy dew distils from the rigging.
That gray monotony of sea is not at all homelike, being as yet new and
not used to the procession of keels. It holds a very few pictures and
the best of its stories - those relating to seal-poaching among the
Kuriles and the Russian rookeries - are not exactly fit for publication.
There is a man in Yokohama who in a previous life burned galleons with
Drake. He is a gentleman adventurer of the largest and most
resourceful - by instinct a carver of kingdoms, a ruler of men on the
high seas, and an inveterate gambler against Death. Because he supplies
nothing more than sealskins to the wholesale dealers at home, the fame
of his deeds, his brilliant fights, his more brilliant escapes, and his
most brilliant strategy will be lost among sixty-ton schooners, or told
only in the mouths of drunken seamen whom none believe.
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