[Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas by Herman Melville]@TWC D-Link book
Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas

CHAPTER XXVII
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From where we lay, the trees behind seemed to lock their leafy boughs over its bowsprit; which, from its position, looked nearly upright.
She was an American whaler, a very old craft.

Having sprung a leak at sea, she had made all sail for the island, to heave down for repairs.
Found utterly unseaworthy, however, her oil was taken out and sent home in another vessel; the hull was then stripped and sold for a trifle.
Before leaving Tahiti, I had the curiosity to go over this poor old ship, thus stranded on a strange shore.

What were my emotions, when I saw upon her stern the name of a small town on the river Hudson! She was from the noble stream on whose banks I was born; in whose waters I had a hundred times bathed.

In an instant, palm-trees and elms--canoes and skiffs--church spires and bamboos--all mingled in one vision of the present and the past.
But we must not leave little Jule.
At last the wishes of many were gratified; and like an aeronaut's grapnel, her rusty little anchor was caught in the coral groves at the bottom of Papeetee Bay.

This must have been more than forty days after leaving the Marquesas.
The sails were yet unfurled, when a boat came alongside with our esteemed friend Wilson, the consul.
"How's this, how's this, Mr.Jermin ?" he began, looking very savage as he touched the deck.


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