Word: junking
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...PIRATE JUNK-Clifford Johnson-Scribner...
...often disguise themselves as passengers, ships plying in those dangerous waters are fitted with "anti-piracy grilles" that screen off the deck-passengers from the rest of the vessel, prevent surprise attacks. Until last year, piracy was unknown along China's northern coast. Then one March morning pirate junks attacked the British-owned coasting steamer Nanchang, waiting for a pilot off the mouth of the Liao River. Contrary to all rules, four British officers were captured, three of them held for ransom for five and a half dreary months. To while away the time and keep track...
...attack was practically over before the ship's company could recover from their surprise. Cornered in their cabins, where they had run for their guns, the four officers were bundled over the side and into the tiny glory hole of one of the junks. Three days after their capture, when the junk was anchored in a muddy tidal creek, they made their first attempt at escape. After floundering all night in oozy mud they were glad to get back to their prison. Soon one of them was sent off with a note demanding ransom. The other three settled down...
...simply because it recounts an experience few men would care to have, but because its skeleton narrative is covered with the flesh & blood of homely detail, Pirate Junk deserves a high place in the true-story library. When Author Johnson read part of his diary to his companions, they grumbled that he had left out everything important and put in irrelevancies. Plain readers will not agree with them...
...World. It was built by Charles of Lindus in 280 B. c., crashed in an earthquake 56 years later. For 880 years bronze fragments of it littered the harbor of Rhodes. Finally in 656 A. D. the tidy Saracens after capturing the island sold the remnants to a junk dealer, who carted them away on 900 camels...