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Tih it passed like a tortoise, and we caround of Spaniard and pirate and buccaneer, the fringe of that zone of beauty and villainy and fear, and sailed slowly past the islands, looking for our prey
The sea was blue as blue could be Only in the lowed blood red, or spread upon its still bosoold of all the Indies, or becareen shot with areat and s across it from horizon to horizon The ship rent the net with a wake of white fire The air was balm; the islands were enchanted places, abandoned by Spaniard and Indian, overgrown, serpent-haunted The reef, the still water, pink or gold, the gleareen plume of the palm, the scarlet birds, the cataracts of bloo incense, the warmth, the wonder of that fantastic world Sometiardens of the sea gods, and, looking down, saw red and purple bloo birds Oncebelow us a sunken ship With howdroould rise froave up their dead, no old-disked, or barred and spotted with crimson, or silver and purple The dolphin and the tunny and the flying fish sith us Sohts of small birds came to us from the land Sometimes the sea was thickly set with full-blown pale red blooht and a nettle to the touch If a stored and threatened, it presently swept away, and the blue laughed again When the sun sank, there arose in the east such a ht to all the realuorous and seductive was most absolute empress of the wonderful land and the wonderful sea
We were in the hunting grounds, and ather flowers Day after day atched for Spanish sails; for the plate fleets went that way, and soht stray aside At last, in the clear green bay of a nameless island at which we stopped for water, we found two carracks coht treasure in rich cloths and gems A week later, in a strait between two islands like tinted clouds, we fought a very great galleon froh and silenced her ordnance, then boarded her and found a king's ranso had ceased and the treasure was ours, then we four stood side by side on the deck of the slowly sinking galleon, in front of our prisoners,--of the ht well, of the ashen priests and the treood hua hich to prank their villainous bodies, and prisoners hom to make merry When I ordered the Spaniards to lower their boats, and taking with them their priests and woed