This vessel was the Minorca, which, as we[Pg 235] know, had left Old Harbour shortly after eight o'clock that morning, and now she had shrunk the Mother Country into a delicate vision, and slightly leaning from the wind was sliding with a steady keel through the water which beautified the copper that shone ruddily under her weather-bow with the prisms and crystals and gems of the ocean fountain. In spite of Admiral Lawrence's admiration of her, she would excite laughter in this age as an example of the stump-ended fabrics which the shipwrights of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries were building for sailors. Yet many of these structures made wonderfully long voyages and kept the seas, touching here and there to careen, for as lengthy a period as the average life of the modern steel fabric.,
"Oh, is that so? Haven't I heered you an' Cobin Keeler say, time and ag'in, that that's how you both got the smoke-habit? And look at you old chimbneys now; the pipe's never out'a your mouths.",
Captain Acton received Mr Lawrence in his library, a small but very elegant room. It was lighted by wax candles on the table and wax candles on the chimney-piece. Its walls were covered with valuable books in finely carved cases. Captain Acton was reading when Mr Lawrence was announced. He immediately put down his book and rose. It would have been easy to see that he was struck by and pleased with the fine figure and handsome face of Mr Lawrence as he strode through the doorway, bowing with dignity and grace as he advanced. Of course the Captain was perfectly well acquainted with Mr Lawrence; he had been to his house to dinner on more than one occasion with Sir William; they had met at the Admiral's house and out-of-doors..
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