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Billy nodded. Jim, had he but known it, might have had everything Billy owned, including Croaker, Ringdo, Moll and the pups. "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." Billy turned on him. "If you want'a make fun of a charm, why all right, go ahead," he said coldly. "Only I know I wouldn't do it, not if I wanted it to save me from a ghost, anyway.".
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Conrad
After a time Harry pushed his stool back from the table. "Byes," he said, producing a short black pipe from his pocket. "It's lend ye a spade and lantern I'll do an' gladly; but it's yerselves would surely not be axin' me t' test me powers ag'in a spirrut. Listen now. Old Scroggie's ghost do be guardin' his money, wheriver it lies. That you know as well as me. It's frank I'll be wid ye, an' tell ye that ag'in spirruts me powers are as nuthin'. An' go widin the unholy circle av the ha'nted grove to do favor t' aither man 'er divil I'll not." Here, with many low croaks, he proceeded to search his surroundings with quick, suspicious eyes, straining forward to peer closely at scrub or bush, then cunningly twisting about suddenly as though hoping to take some skulking watcher behind him unawares. "It is wonderful to think," said Miss Acton,[Pg 97] "how far a ship like this will go. I suppose she would go around the world." He finished his supper in a very gloomy mood. His character has been imperfectly drawn if it leaves upon the reader the impression that he was no more than a gallant, handsome, hectoring scoundrel, a drunkard, a liar, and a gambler. He was more than this, and better than this. In him was a very great deal of honest, sturdy, British human nature, and amongst those who saw the white skin of his character peeping through the rags and tatters of his morals was the young lady whom he had locked up in his cabin. Was he driving, had he driven her mad? This was an awful thought to him, a figure, a presentment on the canvas of his scheme which his utmost imagination never could have painted. He was passionately [Pg 298]fond of her. In truth he was risking his neck to win her. His inmost sensibility as a man and as a gentleman was in perpetual posture of recoil over the reflection that his hand it was that had made this gently-nurtured, beautiful, adorable girl a prisoner in a little ship that was rolling to a port in which she was to be fraudulently sold. He thought of her in the lovely drawing-room of Old Harbour House: the soft illumination of wax lights; the sweet incense of flowers; the piano whose keys were accompanied by her own melodious warblings; her little dog; all the comforts and luxuries which wealth could provide her with; all that a tender-hearted and loving father could endow his only child whom he loved with. And then he thought of her torn from all this pleasantness and sweetness and elegance, so robed that in a short period she must become beggarly to the eye; after her father's hospitable and plentiful table, fed with the poor fare of a common little ship..
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