Crossword-Solution: PROA 4 letters, 79 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

One morning, shortly after we had begun our usual trip for the day, and were rounding a headland, I was almost stupefied to behold in front of me the masts of a boat (which I afterwards found to be a Malay proa), close in-shore.

Morning showed her out of sight of land, and there was a visible ripple under her bows; but she complained bitterly in her bowels, and, as though the noise had called it, there shot along across the purple sea a swift, dark proa, hawk-like and curious, which presently ranged alongside and wished to know if the _Haliotis_ were helpless.

Men, white, naked and savage, swarmed down her sides—some with red-hot iron bars, and others with large hammers—threw themselves upon those innocent inquiring strangers, and, before any man could say what had happened, were in full possession of the proa, while the lawful owners bobbed in the water overside.

Next day there was no _Haliotis_—only a little proa rocking in the warm rain at the mouth of the harbour, whose crew watched with hungry eyes the smoke of a gunboat on the horizon.

Being nigh shore, we saw first one proa; a little after, two or three more, and at last a great many boats came from all the adjacent bays.