"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.",
One sat at the table who peered at him hard when Mr Short began. This was a middle-aged man in a brown wig. He was one of the two clerks kept by Mr Greyquill, and regularly dined at "The Swan's" ordinary, a repast which had never once been decorated by the presence of Mr Greyquill, who, living in rooms over his offices, chose to eat for his breakfast a little fish which he bought from[Pg 129] a man with a barrow with whom he haggled, and for his dinner a cutlet or a piece of steak, just enough for one, with vegetables, and for supper whatever might have been left from breakfast or dinner, and if nothing was left, then a piece of "hearty bread and cheese," as he would term it, and a glass of beer.,
"No, it ain't, 'cause he kin kill a black snake a sight easier than he kin a womper, an' I'll tell you why. Black-snakes have got teeth. They bite. But their backbone is easy broke. A womper hasn't any teeth. He strikes with his bony nose. You know what one of them snakes kin do? You saw that big one, down in Patterson's swamp lay open Moll's face with one slash. They're thick necked, an' take a lot of killin'. This crow kin kill a black-snake with one slash of his bill. He has to choke the womper to death.".
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