A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 24: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A QUEER RACE. 21 -. Yes, Ido. I have very little more left than I stand up in? But what of that? [ am young, the world is before me, and when I get back I shall try again. [ mean to make my fortune and be somebody yet, Bolsover, before I am very much older.” ‘‘ Fortune! fortune! If we could only find the Santa _ Anna we should both make our fortunes right off. There is gold and silver enough on that ship for ahundred fort- unes, and big ’uns at that.” “The Santa Anna! -What is the Santa Anna, and where is she?” “I wish I knew,” said the old sailor, with a sigh; “I wish I knew. It is what [ have been trying to find out these thirty years and more. ‘‘ I’ll tell you all about it ” —lowering his voice to a confidential whisper—“ only don’t let the others know—they laugh at me, and say Tam crazy. But never mind; let them laugh as wins. I shall find her yet. I don’t think I could die without finding her. You won’t say anything?” ‘* Not a word.” , ‘‘ Well,” went on the boatswain, after a few pensive pulls at his pipe, ‘‘it came about in this way. My father, he was a seafaring man like myself; he has been dead thirty-three years. He’d have been nigh on ninety by this time if he had lived. Well, my father—he was a seafaring man, you'll remember—my father chanced to — be at the Azores—a good many people see the Azores, leastways Pico, but not many lands there—buit my father did, and stopped a month or two—I don’t know what for —and being a matter of sixty years since, it does not much matter. Well, while he was there, he used to go about in a boat, all alone, fishing and looking round—my father was always a curiosish sort of man, and he had an eve like a hawk. Well, one day he was sailing round the island they calis Corvo, very close inshore, when he Spies, in a crevice of a cliff—the coast is uncommon rugged—he spies something as didn’t look quite like a stone—it was too round and regular like; so he lowers his sail, takes his sculls, and goes and gets it. What do you think it was?” ‘‘[ have no idea. <A bottle of rum, perhaps.”’ ‘““No, no, not that,” said Tom, with a hurt look, as if I had been jesting with a sacred subject. ‘‘It was a tin Gomic JOO qj (EO)