Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne – författare

Excerpt: "The pay is small enough," said Captain Kettle, staring at the blue paper. "It''s a bit hard for a man of my age and experience to come down to a job like piloting, on eight pound a month and my grub.""All right, Capt''n," replied the agent. "You needn''t tell me what I know already. The pay''s miserable, the climate''s vile, and the bosses are beasts. And yet we have more applicants for these berths on the Congo than there are vacancies for. And f''why is it, Capt''n? Because there''s no questions asked.

Excerpt: "e;"e;Mighty beach to-day!"e; grumbled Captain Image, and handed binoculars across to the purser. Mr. Balgarnie tossed his cigarette over the lee rail and tucked a sheaf of papers into his mouth so as to have two spare hands. Day had ten minutes before glared up over an oily swell-writhing sea of bottle-green; dew lay in fat greasy gouts on the deck planks and the skylight frames, foretelling in clear prophecy another spell of scalding West African sunshine; and a mile out from the crashing, bellowing surf that smoked along the beach, the S.S. M'poso buttocked sullenly over the swells, with engines rung off, and sweating firemen on the top of the fiddley, slewing ventilators to catch a flavor of the breeze. "e;They've seen us, sir, at the factory,"e; said Mr. Balgarnie. "e;All the boys are out working cargo, and there's old Swizzle-Stick Smith sucking his eternal pipe and hustling them with a chiquot. I can catch the glint of his eyeglass. Wonder how long that man's been out on the Coast? Must be a matter of twenty years now by all accounts since he had his last run home. He's found the right kind of ju-ju to dodge fever-palaver, anyhow. They say he's a lazy old beach-comber as a general thing, but he's up bright and early this morning."e;"e;

Excerpt: ""Not slaves, your Highness," said the Governor. "We call them engagés here: it''s a genteeler style. The Lord General keeps us supplied." "I''ll be bound he gave them the plainer name," said Prince Rupert. The Governor of Tortuga shrugged his shoulders. "On the bills of lading they are written as Malignants; but judging from the way he packed the last cargo, Monsieur Cromwell regards them as cattle. It is evident that he cared only to be shut of them. They were so packed that one half were dead and over the side before the ship brought up to her anchors in the harbour here. And what were left fetched but poor prices. There was a strong market too. The Spaniards had been making their raids on the hunters, and many of the engagés had been killed: our hunters wanted others; they were hungry for others; but these poor rags of seaworn, scurvy-bitten humanity which offered, were hardly worth taking away to teach the craft—Your Highness neglects the cordial.""

Excerpt: "It seems customary in a book of travel to make frequent allusions to other voyagers who have journeyed over the same ground, or at least the same district, and to make constant references to them, and give copious quotations from their works. Of course we ought to have gone to the British Museum before starting on our travel, and there read up all books which in the least bore upon the country which we were going to visit. We omitted to do this, firstly, because we preferred to observe things for ourselves, from our own individual standpoint, unprejudiced by the way in which other people had observed them; and, secondly, from the far more potent reason that we made our actual start in a great hurry, and had little enough time for any preparations whatever. However, on our return to England we thought well to check the information we had garnered. So we duly provided ourselves with readers’ tickets for that institution, and went to the British Museum Library, and got down every book which seemed in any way to bear upon the country we had wandered over, regardless of the tongue in which it was written. It was a surprise to us to learn (and may we add that the surprise was not without its pleasant savour?) that of all the volumes in that collection not one covered the route which we took during summer through Arctic Lapland. Many had gone near it, from a gentleman of bygone date who wrote in Latin, to Mr. Paul du Chaillu, who chats about the larger part of the Scandinavian Peninsula. But we seemed to have stumbled across the one bit of Europe which has not been pilloried on paper at one time or another, and so we here venture to take up a couple of note-books which were originally made for personal gratification, and amplify them into a volume of letterpress and sketches which may haply interest others. "

Excerpt: "... The first shot was just a rib too far back, and though it staggered him, he didn''t stop to it. Out tinkled cartridge number one and in went a second, and "cluck" said the breech-block. And then as he slewed round, I got the next bullet home, bang behind the shoulder. That did it. He tucked down his long Roman nose, and went heels over tip like a shot rabbit; and when a big elk that stands seventeen hands at the withers plays that trick, I tell you it shows a new hand something he hadn''t much idea of before. We ran up eagerly enough. "Meget stor bock," shouted Ulus, and whipped out his knife, and proceeded to do the offices, being filled with strong glee, which he imparted to the driving rain, the swishing trees, and my dripping self. And, by Jove, his highness was a beauty too! Antlers in velvet, of course, as is the fashion with all Norwegian deer at this time of year; but there were eight points on each, and they''ve got the most approved "impudent" downward curve. What with no rype and few trout, I''d been feeling rather down on my luck all these long weeks till now; but this big elk turned the scale. Glad I came."

Excerpt: "We were both of us not a little stiff as the result of sleeping out in the open all that night, for even in Grand Canary the dew-fall and the comparative chill of darkness are not to be trifled with. For myself on these occasions I like a bit of a run as an early refresher. But here on this rough ground in the middle of the island there were not three yards of level to be found, and so as Coppinger proceeded to go through some sort of dumb-bell exercises with a couple of lumps of bristly lava, I followed his example. Coppinger has done a good deal of roughing it in his time, but being a doctor of medicine amongst other things—he takes out a new degree of some sort on an average every other year—he is great on health theories, and practises them like a religion. There had been rain two days before, and as there was still a bit of stream trickling along at the bottom of the barranca, we went down there and had a wash, and brushed our teeth. Greatest luxury imaginable, a toothbrush, on this sort of expedition. “Now,” said Coppinger when we had emptied our pockets, “there’s precious little grub left, and it’s none the better for being carried in a local Spanish newspaper.” “Yours is mostly tobacco ashes.” “It’ll get worse if we leave it. We’ve a lot more bad scrambling ahead of us.” That was obvious. So we sat down beside the stream there at the bottom of the barranca, and ate up all of what was left. It was a ten-mile tramp to the fonda at Santa Brigida, where we had set down our traps; and as Coppinger wanted to take a lot more photographs and measurements before we left this particular group of caves, it was likely we should be pretty sharp set before we got our next meal, and our next taste of the PATRON’S splendid old country wine. My faith! If only they knew down in the English hotels in Las Palmas what magnificent wines one could get—with diplomacy—up in some of the mountain villages, the old vintage would become a thing of the past in a week."

Excerpt: "“It seems to me,” said a philosopher once, “that there are no entirely good men in the world, and none completely bad. Single out your best man, and you will find that he lacks perfection in some part of him; and examine your worst, and you will see that he has at least one redeeming quality.” In this book the men mostly verge towards bad: but some are better than others. Because they are merely human, they act according to their lights. You may meet others like them any day if you go out and about, and most of them give extremely good dinners. Till they are found out, you consider them amusing: afterwards, being better than they, you instantly set them down as most pernicious scoundrels, and shake hands with yourself, and write to your tailor to order more noticeable phylacteries on the next new suit. This is called “keeping up a healthy moral tone,” and does a great deal of good in the world. Scalloway, Shetland Islands, 1895."