[Libbt-devel] uter meeti

[Benestad <par...@no...>]

 of the goods and passengers who were once disembarked on what was the
muddy beach of the infant city. But the building in question exhibited a
certain elaboration of form and design utterly inconsistent with this
idea. The structure obtruded a bowed front to the street, with a curving
line of small windows, surmounted by elaborate carvings and scroll work
of vines and leaves, while below, in faded gilt letters, appeared the
legend "Pontiac--Marseilles." The effect of this incongruity was
startling. It is related that an inebriated miner, impeded by mud and
drink before its door, was found gazing at its remarkable facade with an
expression of the deepest despondency. "I hev lived a free life,
pardner," he explained thickly to the Samaritan who succored him, "and
every time since I've been on this six weeks' jamboree might have
kalkilated it would come to this. Snakes I've seen afore now, and rats
I'm not unfamiliar with, but when it comes to the starn of a ship risin'
up out of the street, I reckon it's time to pass in my checks." "It IS a
ship, you blasted old soaker," said the Samaritan curtly. It was indeed
a ship. A ship run ashore and abandoned on the beach years before by her
gold-seeking crew, with the debris of her scattered stores and cargo,
overtaken by the wild growth of the strange city and the reclamation of
the muddy flat, wherein she lay hopelessly imbedded; her retreat cut off
by wharves and quays and breakwater, jostled at first by sheds, and then
impacted in a block of solid warehouses and dwellings, her rudder, port,
and counter boarded in, and now gazing hopelessly through her cabin
windows upon the busy street before her. But still a ship despite her
transformation. The faintest line of contour yet left visible spoke of
the buoyancy of another element; the balustrade of her roof was
unmistakably a taffrail. The rain slipped from her swelling sides with a
certain lingering touch of the sea; the soil around her was still
treacherous with its suggestions, and even the wind whistled nautically
over her chimney. If, in the fury of some southwesterly gale, she had
one night slipped her strange moorings and left a shining track through
the lower town to the dist