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PAGE |
| Cover, Frontispiece etc. |
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| Preface |
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| Index |
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| List of Illustrations |
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| Brief Outline of Career - [Inserted by this editor.] |
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| CHAPTER I |
BOYHOOD
Birth - Il Gobbo - Queen Victoria at Bonn - Thunderstorm at Brussels - A Waterloo fraud - French Revolution of 1848 - Bellew-Higgins - At Cheltenham College - A missing link - Prospects of the Navy - A providential pickpocket - An echo of Cawnpore. |
13 |
| CHAPTER II |
I GO TO SEA
H.M.S. Retribution - Baltic Flying Squadron - Confused impressions - Bilge-water tea - Weevils and cockroaches - Boatswain and skipper - Cobbings - French mids and their ways - Hamburg - Sail drill and sailormen - The sea person of to-day. |
24 |
| CHAPTER III |
THE BALTIC
Bloodless campaign - Skating under fire - Sweden and revelry - A Governor and his bath - A night in a forest and a drunken fiddler - Our devil-dodger - Sorrows of a midshipman - Short commons - Copenhagen - Nondescript attire - Boat accident in the ice - Return to England. |
38 |
| CHAPTER IV |
SHEEBNESS
North Sea gales - Christmas Eve - Home again - "The Lofts," Sheerness Dockyard - A ball Chased by footpads - Dockyard "matey's" - Dockyard plunder. |
53 |
| CHAPTER V |
MOROCCO AND THE CRIMEA
Morocco and Riff pirates - Attack on Melilla - Safe fighting - Reckless Moorish courage - Sail for the Crimea - First glimpse of Constantinople - Deserted Sevastopol - The Valley of Death - Treasure trove - Balaclava - Mary Magdalene - A fight in a shanty - Equine dilemma - Touch and go of being left behind - England again - Leave the Retribution - Appointed to a sailing frigate. |
59 |
| CHAPTER VI |
THE IRIS AND THE TROPICS
Join H.M.S. Iris - Lively times at Upnor gipsy camp - Pistol practice as carried on by the Royal Engineers - We shoot off a man's ear - Our Skipper and Chaplain - Our education - Messmates - A mixed lot - Life in a frigate - A musical Cerberus - Channel gales - Goodbye to England for four years.
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75 |
| CHAPTER VII |
RIO JANEIRO AND CAPE COLONY
Rio Janeiro - Its magnificent scenery - Slave market - A "flogging ship" - Six strokes of the cat for every one on board - Ball at the Palace - Entertaining sea-slang and the pretty Brazilian - A curious history - Plague-stricken village - Prelude of a psychic experience - Story of an albatross - Cape of Good Hope - Bush-men - Dorsal disabilities of their women - De Wet's estimate of his Boer countrymen - Sail for Australia. |
88 |
| CHAPTER VIII |
SYDNEY: NEW SOUTH WALES
Short tack again - Our literary tastes - Stormy petrels and their mysterious ways - Sea marvel of "white water" - Amsterdam Islands - The Skipper's wig - Sydney Harbour - Insiders and outsiders - Difficulties social and other through want of decent clothing - Sir William Denison and his family - Alfred of that ilk - Adventures on horseback - Disastrous archery - "Young ass and young fool" - Sympathy with assassins. |
103 |
| CHAPTER IX |
NORFOLK ISLAND AND THE NEW HEBRIDES
Norfolk Island - Its fascination - Beautiful scenery - Its terrible past - Wholesale osculation - Honi soit qui mal y pense - Embarrassing situation for Sir William Denison - His Staff help him out - Contrast in manners of Norfolk Island men and women - Pitcairn Islanders - Mutiny of the Bounty - Missionary effort - Soap, tobacco, and religious books - Fight between whale, thrasher and sword-fish - Spreading the Gospel - Massacre, as usual - A cannibal delicacy. |
116 |
| CHAPTER X |
NEW CALEDONIA AND THE LOYALTY ISLANDS
Port of France, a deadly hole - Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand - Faith in his own theories - Threatened duel ends amicably - Loyalty islanders - Unceremonious exit from the frigate - The Palolo : its marvels - More massacres - Blood, rum, and missionaries - A glimpse of bush life - Ravensworth - Une incomprise - Shipwreck of the Duncan Dunbar - A gold-field - Tasmania - A sympathetic Bishop. |
135 |
| CHAPTER XI |
NEW ZEALAND
Fascination of New Zealand - Appreciation of the Maori - Shipwreck of his noble life - Parson, police, and prison - The Bay of Islands - War dances - Hokianga - Consumption and the white man's clothing - Bishop Selwyn's devotion to the native cause - The Waikato River - Interesting excursion and narrow escape - Native chivalry - Military unpreparedness and traditional muddle - Two ring stories. |
156 |
| CHAPTER XII |
WAR AND AN IDYL
Taranaki War - Naval Brigade - Beauchamp Seymour (Lord Alcester) - Hotham - Province of Canterbury - Rencontre with the missing link - Muscular Bishops - An earthquake - An idyllic life - A Maori Chief's daughter - A change of Skipper - A warrior bantam - A phantom cat - Homeward bound Pay-off - Cram for examination - Back to Cheltenham - Some of my relatives - My cousin, Gambier Parry - Sicut omnes. |
177 |
| CHAPTER XIII |
FRANCE, EGYPT AND SYRIA
Dieppe - Its delightful raffish Society - Escape from deadly Cheltenham - A queer old house - A byegone type of Roman ecclesiastic - Did Columbus discover America? - Brief resumé of contra-argument - H.M.S. Marlborough - I get to Egypt - Vivid impressions - Danvers and the Sphinx - H.M.S. Malacca and Gerard Napier - Many trips - Tight place in Adăna - Crossing the River Gihun - A night in a Turcoman camp - Antioch - Its byegone splendour - Legend of the Holy Lance - Countless millions of migrating wild duck. |
197 |
| CHAPTER XIV |
CYPRUS AND THE IONIAN ISLANDS
Near loss of H.M.S. Malacca - Wreck of mail steamer - Kismet and the Hadji - Exploring a harem - Baalbec the marvellous - The Cedars of Lebanon - Were not those of Solomon - Cyprus - Halima, foster-mother of Mahomet : her tomb - Paphos, St. Paul, and the Paphian goddess - Survival of Babylonian festival - The Ionian Islands - Sappho - Sea marvel of Cephalonia - A wedding and a fiasco. |
222 |
| CHAPTER XV |
THE SPANISH COURT
Atlantic seaboard of Morocco - Departed glory - Moorish marriage - A second Alhambra - A lonely daughter of Erin - Hyænas and Mahommedan burial - Dead man walks home again - Moor life in tents - Gibraltar - Cork woods - Spanish bloodhounds - Cadiz - Isabella II. - O'Donnel, Duke of Tetuan - Seville and Salambo - Justa and Rufina - Queen should have been a bumboat woman - Her áme damnèe, Patronicio the Nun - Pedro the Cruel and the great Ruby in the British regalia. |
239 |
| CHAPTER XVI |
ALEXANDRIA AND PALESTINE
Federal and Confederate vessels of war - An official murder? - An apparition and a suggested explanation - Embark for Jaffa - A fool and his harem - Yashmaks and intrigue - The holy fire fraud at Christ's tomb - The Jordan pilgrimage - Dead Sea bathers - Mistaken sexes - Mar Saba and how the Abbot solved the difficulty - Imitatio Christi - The travelling Teuton and why he is popular - Steamer to England – Religion - Cholera - The raft. |
256 |
| CHAPTER XVII |
EMIGRATION
A glimpse of London Society: smart and otherwise - Discovery of Archangels in our family - Queen Victoria's Court : no sailors need apply - A spiritualistic cheat - A challenge - Childish sequel - Engaged to be married - Emigration - More steamer experiences - Near foundering - Ravensworth once more. |
280 |
| CHAPTER XVIII |
RAVENSWORTH
Stern realities of bush life - No glamour remains - True types of bush "hand" - Bushrangers and cattle thieves - Highway robbery and murder - Chased - Cross a stream in flood - Lost in the bush - Starvation - A creeping horror - Mustering cattle - A brave woman and a black snake. |
296 |
| CHAPTER XIX |
DISILLUSION
Goodbye to the bush - Indecision - Leave it to chance - Ship for England - Incidents of voyage home - Personal combat with a villainous Jew - Queer doings - Appointed to Channel Fleet - Admiral Blether, K.C.B., &c., &c. - Heroic hogwash - Fenians - Attempt to capture the Head Centre - An Irish wedding - Southend : al fresco bathing - Mr. Gladstone - Lord Houghton. |
313 |
| CHAPTER XX |
ANDAMAN AND COCHIN-CHINA
H.M.S. Sylvia - Sail for China and Japan - Shooting excursion in Trincomali - Migrating elephants - Narrow escape from wild boar - Temple of the Thousand Columns - A Dutch Sappho - Andaman Islands - Singapore and a great Chinaman - French Cochin-China - Marvellous adventures with French officers - Tigers and pythons - Tartarin not in it. |
332 |
| CHAPTER XXI |
CHINA
Sail for China - Hongkong - Comicality of sporting clerks - Canton prisons - Executions - Infanticide - Cantonese "unemployed" - Astrologers - A brave man and a tiger - Dead Chinaman shipped in San Francisco - Chinese medicine - Driving out devils - A Shamãn - Missionary and a booby-hatch. |
347 |
| CHAPTER XXII |
JAPAN
Japan, an unsolved mystery - Mother Grundy would expire in a week - A first experience of the great unclothed - The Inland Sea - Scandalous behaviour of Europeans - Sir Harry Keppel - Drowning of American Admiral and eleven of his men - Mikasai and junk-women - Two adventures with bears - Japan's Paphos - The Geisha - The Gaku : Japanese music - Sylvia pays off in Hongkong - Back in England - Florence - Victor Emanuel - H.M.S. Caledonia - Temple of Diana - Affair with brigands - Malta fever - Given up - Pull round - Invalided home - Get married - Retire - A haunted house. |
364 |
| CHAPTER XXIII |
RUSSO-TURKISH WAR
Go to Turkey as Times naval correspondent - Hobart Pasha: his incompetence - Freeman the historian - Gallenga - Suleiman Pasha, murderer of Abdul Aziz - Plot to restore Murad V. to the throne - Woods Pasha, K.C.B. - Abdul Hamid - Midhat Pasha. |
391 |
| CHAPTER XXIV |
TREASON AND MASSACRE
Hobart's idiosyncrasies - The Black Sea and Danube - Russian gold - Muddle and roguery initiate the war - Abdul Kerim, Serdar Ekrem - A human monster - Abandon naval reporting and take to the Army - Dirty trick of a fellow war correspondent - Circassians and Bashi-bazouks - Massacres - My servant hanged as a spy - Attacked by sheep-dogs. |
404 |
| CHAPTER XXV |
THE SHIPKA
The beauty of the Tundja Valley - Advance of Suleiman's army - Desolation and ruin - Some types of war correspondents - Rescue of a Bulgarian woman - She disappears in a night attack - Assaults on the Shipka Pass - An invaluable icon. |
419 |
| CHAPTER XXVI |
THE SHIPKA BATTLES
Fighting in the Shipka - Extraordinary bravery of the Turk - Bedjib Pasha - Disgraceful indifference of Turkish Generals - My reports reach home and Suleiman grows nasty - An irresponsible ruffian - I leave Turkey, and say goodbye to the reader. |
433 |
