Unmarked6698
- Flag inappropriate
- Show review history
Great, black leeches clung to the slimy lily-roots; water lizards lay basking half in and half out of the water, or crept furtively from under-water grotto to grotto. And there were other things which Billy knew were hidden from his sight—things even more loathsome. For the first time in his life he experienced for Nature a feeling akin to dread and loathing. It was like a nightmare to him, menacing, unreal, freighted with strange horrors. The Aurora's boat was swept alongside the brig, and Captain Acton and the Admiral clambered over the side up a short flight of steps, and in an instant Lucy was clasped in the devouring embrace of her father. Such an old-world scene taxes the highest gifts of the pen or the brush. This Louisa Ann was about fifty years old; she was nearly as broad as she was long. Her fore-mast was stepped far in the bows; her decks were stained and grimy; the paint had faded out of the inside of her bulwarks. Her sails were patched and so dingy that they might have been coloured as a smack's. Her rusty sides were lined with yawning seams amid which three little circular windows were merged with no accentuation from the dirt-shrouded glass which prevented the sea from entering the blistered, worn, mani-coloured hull. Her sailors looked as though[Pg 359] they were shipwrecked: long-haired, bearded, sallow, in clothes considerably tattered, in aspect melancholy and dejected with lack of nourishment, dullness of sailing and ceaseless motion: for here was the tub wallowing like a buoy in a popple upon a smooth sea, and the frightful weather she would make off Cape Horn or in a gale of wind the imagination of a sailor could readily picture by witnessing her motions now. "Where do you dine, Walter?".
453 people found this
review helpful
kez_ h (Kez_h)
- Flag inappropriate
- Show review history
Captain Weaver faintly smiled, slightly glancing at Admiral Lawrence.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
"But pray, Lucy," exclaimed Captain Acton, "what was Mr Eagle about? Did not he know that you were Mr Lawrence's prisoner, though he might not have been able to guess that it was Mr Lawrence's intention to navigate the ship to Rio to sell her there? Did not he make any effort to rescue you by appeals to the Captain, or by so working up the crew as to determine them to sail the ship back to Old Harbour Town?"
658 people found this
review helpful
Conrad
Hinter, with an effort, shook off his first cringing fear. "Supposing I tell you that it's none of your business, Mr. Maddoc," he said, with a poor attempt at bluff. "I am not under your jurisdiction here." Mr Lawrence pocketed the packet with a bow. Occasionally his eye went to Lucy, but he never suffered it to dwell, nor indeed did he seem to mark his sense of her presence by any particular behaviour. He was perfectly sober, his eyes clear and beaming, his cheeks painted with a little colour, and his apparel showed care. His father glanced at him and seemed well pleased, and Lucy owned to herself that she had never seen him look more handsome, and that somehow or other no stage seemed to fit his peculiar type of beauty more happily, with a subtler blending of all qualities of its furniture with the spirituality of the man, than the deck of a ship with the rigging soaring. But what was to be said aboard that loutish old brig, with a crew of half-starved, weedy mariners looking on agape? In a very few minutes Lucy was handed into the Aurora's boat, and the party were making for the schooner as swiftly as the dip and sweep of oars could impel the keen-bowed little fabric. This was manifestly all that the frigate had left the other ships to ascertain, and the lieutenant was in the act of springing on to the deck, when Captain Acton shouted: "Pray, sir, can you tell us what those ships are?".
298 people found this
review helpful