A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

A QUEER RACE. | 25 crabbed; the lines were, moreover, so very close together that I found the perusal, or, more correctly, the study of the manuscript by no means easy. Parts of it, in fact, were quite illegible. I nad often to infer the meaning of the writer from the context, and there were several pas- sages which I could not make out at all. No wonder the boatswain wanted a man of ‘‘’ead and edycation ” to helphim. ‘The form of the document was that of a journal, or log; but it was hardly possible that it could be the work of any combatant officer of a war- ship on active service. ‘The style was too literary and diffuse, and, so to speak, too womanish and devout. ‘Lhe writer, moreover, whose name, as I read on, I found to be ** Hare,” did not write in the least hke a seaman. He could not well have been a passenger; and J had not read far before | found that he wasa clergyman and naval ehaplain. Vhe first entry in the diary was probably written at Spithead, and ran thus: ‘Ti. M.S. Hecate, ——— 17th, 1743. ‘‘ Left our moorings this day, under sealed orders, so _ as yet no man on board knows whither we are bound or where we are to cruise. May God bless and prosper our voyage, and protect the dear ones we leave at home! “¢19th.—Been very much indisposed the last two days; not very surprising, considering that this is my first voy- age, and we have had bad weather. Wind now moderat- ing, but still blowing half a gale. ‘* 20th.—The captain has opened his orders. ‘T’he Hecate is to sail with all speed across the Atlantic, ernise about the Gulf of Mexico, in the track of homeward- bound Spanish merchantmen, and keep a sharp lookout for treasure-ships. Officers and ship’s company highly delighted with the prospect thus opened out of prize- money and hard fighting, these treasure-ships being al- ways either heavily armed or under convoy, or both. To do the Hecate justice, I helieve the prospect of hard knocks affords them more pleasure than the hope of re- ward; and though we carry only forty guns, there is not a sailor on board who is not confident that we are a match for any two Spanish frigates aflont. Onr British tars are veritable bull-dogs, and albeit Captain Barnaby (E(o)/ AA) boo KS A (E(0) m