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"What a wicked, dreadful old man!" exclaimed Miss Acton, "to preserve such a[Pg 218] hideous secret, and to be willing to wait for payment of his three hundred pounds out of another man's robbery. What is to be done? What will you do, brother? Our Lucy must be rescued. Is it too late? She was here in this house this morning at seven o'clock. The ship cannot be far off. Cannot she be reached?", "I had made up my mind to ship before the mast in a vessel bound to America, where I should have left her, and sought my fortune in a new country; when through the great kindness that a rich gentleman in this district has for my father, I was offered the command of a barque called the Minorca, a handsome little vessel of about five hundred tons, on terms which a Merchant shipmaster would consider liberal, but which to one, in the face of what I owe, are as a penny piece in the value of a guinea. Captain Acton (R.N., retired)—you may have met him—is the owner of the two little ships. He lives in a beautiful old house, planted in the midst of a fine prospect of gardens and orchards. He has one child, a daughter, a young creature so beautiful that the instant I saw her I irrecoverably lost my heart to her. I offered her marriage; she rejected me, probably because she had been told that I was a drinker and a gambler. I am, nevertheless, determined to possess her as my wife, and with that view have promptly conceived a stratagem or plot which should either end in enabling me to pay off all my debts and live at peace in this country, or be hanged as a pirate.", "I understan'," said Billy, sympathetically..