Digital heart book

A thin cloud overspread the area of the
reef and the adjacent sea--the dust, as I could not but
fancy, of earlier explosions. And, a little apart,
there was yet another focus of centrifugal and
centripetal flight, where, hard by the deafening line
of breakers, her sails (all but the tattered topsail)
snugly furled down, and the red rag that marks Old
England on the seas beating, union down, at the main--
the FLYING SCUD, the fruit of so many toilers, a
recollection in so many lives of men, whose tall spars
had been mirrored in the remotest corners of the sea--
lay stationary at last and for ever, in the first stage
of naval dissolution. Towards her the taut NORAH
CREINA, vulture-wise, wriggled to windward: come from
so far to pick her bones. And, look as I pleased,
there was no other presence of man or of man's
handiwork; no Honolulu schooner lay there crowded with
armed rivals, no smoke rose from the fire at which I
fancied Trent cooking a meal of sea-birds. It seemed,
after all, we were in time, and I drew a mighty breath.


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