Read it through once
But one of the most curious and interesting sights in any seaport is sure to be an old white Norwegian or Swedish sailing barque or brigantine. She will have a battered, storm-beaten appearance, and is yet obviously a comfortable home. The windows of the deck-house may be picked out with a lurid green. The tall, slowmoving, white-bearded skipper and his wife, children, and crew, not to speak of a dog and cats, have their home on this veteran "windjammer." She carries them from some unpronounceable, never-heard-of port in Norway, all over the world. You may see her discharging a cargo of deal plank, through the clumsy square holes in her stern, in a forgotten Fifeshire village, in Madagascar, in China, or in the Straits of Magellan. All her life she is engaged in this work, and her life is an exceedingly long one, to judge from the Viking lines on which she is built.