List,ye landsmen! A ROMANCE OF INCIDENT

"List,ye landsmen! A ROMANCE OF INCIDENT By W. Clark Russell

Excerpt from List, Ye Landsmen: A Romance of Incident

Thus in effect thought I, as I stood upon the quarter-deck of the Royal Brunswick, viewing the noble elevation of the white South Foreland Off which_ the ship was then leisurely rolling as she flapped her way to the Downs with her yards squared to the weak westerly breeze; for - to take you into my confidence at once - this part of the coast of Old England I had the best of all reasons for loving. First of all, I was born at Folkestone next, on losing my parents, I was taken charge of by a maternal uncle, Captain Joseph Round, whose house stood on the road between Sandwich and Deal; and then, when I first went to sea, I was bound apprentice to a master sailing out of Dover Harbor; so that this range of coast had peculiar associations for me. Consider. It comprised the sum of my boyish, and of most, therefore, Of my happiest, memories; indeed, I could not gaze long at those terraces of chalk, with their green slopes of down on top, and with clusters of houses between sparkling like frost, and many a lozenge shaped Window glancing back the light of the sun with the clear, sharp gleam of the diamond, without recollection stealing In a moisture Into my eyes.

List,ye landsmen! A ROMANCE OF INCIDENT By W. Clark Russell"