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"She is a pretty example of the French form," said Captain Acton. "I think I told you she was built at Bordeaux, from which port some elegant structures are sent afloat. But the French cannot approach the Americans as shipbuilders. Take that schooner of mine, the Aurora—by the way, she is due here shortly. I wish she may not have been taken by the enemy." Her rising from the table had caused the gentlemen to rise. They went on deck. Lucy said she was tired and would be glad to take some rest; her accommodation on board the Louisa Ann was very wretched, and she had scarcely been able to sleep on account of the gruff voices, the alarming creaking and groaning noises, and a strange hideous smell which probably came from the cargo, all which she must always associate in memory with the Louisa Ann. She wished however to see the Aurora, and for some minutes she stood on the deck with her father and the Admiral beside her, gazing[Pg 386] round the picture as though entranced. Once again her lovely eyes seemed to brood even in their glances; they appeared to dwell with a dreamy delight on what they beheld. Through her parted lips the sweet breeze rushed, and the hair upon her brow flickered like shadows cast by the wavering of a silver flame. "Well, sir," answered Mr Pledge, pleased by the skipper's candour and condescension, "it's not for a plain sailor man like me to put his hand into such a tar-bucket as this. I know my bit, and I'm a-willing for to do it, and if the hands get to hear the story of the lady it'll come from her or from that there humpbacked steward who waits upon her, and not from me, for I'm for minding my own affairs, and sticking like a barnacle to a ship's bottom to the ondertakings I enter into.".
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“I thank you, Roderick Dhu,” she called out over Billy’s shoulder with another little choke, for Jimmy had refused Mrs. Bennett’s offer of dry clothes and was starting home alone.I tried logging in using my phone number and I
was supposed to get a verification code text,but didn't
get it. I clicked resend a couple time, tried the "call
me instead" option twice but didn't get a call
either. the trouble shooting had no info on if the call
me instead fails.There was
Edith finished her music lesson, dismissed her pupil, and made the little girl tidy if comical, in one of her own frocks. And when the four sat to eat, Billy’s voice rang above the rest in the little song they sang in lieu of grace.
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Conrad
Billy shifted uneasily in his seat. He was sorry now that he had not paid closer attention to the reading of the lesson. "'I hope they won't get among my quail,' I says, an' Scraff he turned round an' looked at me mighty hard, but he didn't say nuthin'. He went away, grumblin', an' carryin' six of Dad's traps. Course I knowed he couldn't catch a weasel in a trap in twenty years an' he didn't catch any either. Ma weasel killed some more of his Leghorns, an' then Scraff he comes to me. 'Billy,' he says, 'is there any way to get rid of weasels?' 'Sure there's a way,' I says, 'but not everybody knows it.' LaRose had crawled to shore and sat dripping and sniffling on the bank. The little leaning vessel, diminished by the distance from which she was surveyed into a size fit only to be manned by Liliputian sailors, crept like a small white cloud along the placid water of Old Harbour, and rounding the pier hauled the wind for a south-westerly course. They watched her as she streamed onwards with a sparkle as pretty as a rainbow at her fore-foot, and a short scope of trembling lustre astern as though she towed a length of satin. A few minutes before she disappeared from the sight of those who viewed her from the lawn of Old Harbour House, past the bluff or round of cliff on which stood the dropsical old lighthouse, she dipped her flag manifestly in response to a hidden salutation, and scarcely had she vanished when there stole out from the edge of the cliff round which she had gone, the slanting figure of a large three-masted schooner with the English ensign at her peak. She was steering directly for Old Harbour. Though she had evidently come a long journey, she made upon those silver-white rippling waters a far handsomer figure than the brig. She was clothed from truck[Pg 81] to waterway with sails which reflected the light of the morning with something of the splendour of polished metal. Her hull was black, but she was inclined sufficiently by the breeze to reveal a narrow breadth of copper sheathing, which sprang pulses of wet dazzling light upon the eye in keen flashes like gun fire..
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