"All hunky. Now you move along, an' if you happen to meet Fatty Watland, er Maurice, er any other boys, don't you let on a word about this.",
The Admiral, Captain Acton, and Captain Weaver stood in the gangway to receive the officer, a man whose portrait should be painted by the caricaturing brush of a Michael Scott. He was this side of forty, and a great Roman nose stood out like a flying jib between two gaunt cheeks whose hollows when he was silent made you think he was sucking in his breath. He wore a pigtail under a very old, tarnished cocked hat. His uniform coat was scarcely held together by the tailor's thread, and appeared to have travelled a score of times round the world in an age when a voyage round the world was regarded as something more prodigious than we should now consider a voyage to the moon, if such a journey were practicable. His shoes were rusty; his hose had gone into mourning over an absence of soap that was all the same as the death of his laundress. Yet despite a garb that made a travesty of the human figure there was something distinguished and even noble in the man's bearing. It was to be seen at once (and no masterful capacity of penetration was needed) that in this officer was the gentleman of old blood, poor and proud, a loyal subject whose heart's life was at the service of his King and country.,
Mr Eagle did not speak. Indeed, having started, he came to a stand and scarcely moved, staring. Of course he knew that the young lady was on board, but realisation had not been completed in his narrow, shallow understanding, because down to this moment he had not been able to use his eyes to see her. But now she stood before him, Miss Lucy Acton indeed, but Lord defend him! how changed! "Why," he reflected with the velocity of thought, "it was only a few days ago, in a manner of speaking, that she comes aboard this vessel when we was lying at the wharf and asks after my rheumatism, and says she'd like to make a voyage to the West Indies if the weather could be kept fine and the sea smooth. And I couldn't help thinking to myself that I never could imagine a smarter and a more modish young party than she looked, whilst now—well, if this rooning away to sea with a man is to be called love, bust[Pg 331] me if it ain't only another name for madness. For what young lady in such sarcumstances as that there with a beautiful 'ome, carriages, sarvants to wait upon her, and a loving father to give her everything that she wants, and more than she wants, would dream of rooning away to sea with a man with no other clothes than those on her back, onless she was as mad as that there Miss Lucy Acton looks.".
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