"I'm not findin' fault with your methods of trainin' boys, Mary," her husband hastened to say. "You're doin' your best by Billy, I know that right well. And Billy is rather a tough stick of first-growth timber to whittle smooth and straight, I know that, too. But the gnarliest hickory makes the best axe-handle, so maybe he'll make a good man some day, with your help."
indibets, Only a little bit of sea lay within his sight; that which he had seen ran in blue ripples between the points of cliff which framed the entrance to Old Harbour. Though the[Pg 167] scene was distant, his sight, for a man of advanced age, was fairly good, and even all that distance off, he could without much difficulty distinguish the fine lines of the Aurora's masts bearing their trucks high above the spars and rigging of the vessels abaft and ahead of her.
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indibets She was within a couple of miles when she shaped herself out of the rain-thickened murkiness. The Aurora was making a free wind, and every stitch of canvas was doing its work. Was yonder stranger French or English? The Admiral and Captain Acton, who were both on deck, left Captain Weaver to his own devices, sensible that they were in the hands of a shrewd, well-seasoned, practical sailor, who knew his ship better than they did. "We'll test her," said he, and the tricolour was run aloft. No flag aboard the brig was to be seen in response. The schooner was crossing the stranger's bows when the brig suddenly let fly a shotted gun at her. Whatever her nationality it was plain she was not satisfied with the show of bunting flying aboard a vessel that any practised eye could at once see was not of French paternity..
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