winbuzz app

Online Casino: Safe, Reputable Gambling in Asia!

He came out of his abstraction with a start and glanced at her, almost guiltily. "Yes, Chick.",

"I don't know what his intentions are," said Mr Lawrence with some blood colouring his face. "I saw the old rascal plain enough, but avoided his eye as I feared he might have the insolence to step aboard and address me in the presence of Captain Acton and the ladies, and yourself, sir. But if he has heard of my appointment I cannot conceive that he meditates my arrest as an alternative to my paying him in full, which he knows I cannot do. I should tell him that by waiting he will receive payment by instalments. This I can manage now that I have money coming to me. Will he stop his sole chance of receiving back his loan by clapping me into gaol?",

"Yep.",

"Speculation is idle," exclaimed Captain Acton, with a slight flavour of impatience in his manner. "I am profoundly puzzled. There can be no question from Mr Adams's statement and from my own observation that the fellow who delivered the missive is cabin-boy, or steward, or whatever you please to call him, of the Minorca, chosen by your son, as he admits, though it seemed to me as I looked at him that nobody less likely and less[Pg 188] inviting for such a post could have been found in the district."

Online Casino Experience: The Perfect Combination of Tradition and Innovation!

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.,

"The nature of these instructions I can only guess at from several conversations which I have had with Captain Acton, who without being in any degree specific, yet seemed to suffer me to read between the sentences of his conversation. And now, sir," said Mr Lawrence with great austerity, "this is the communication you will preserve strict silence upon until the sealed instructions are read. My belief is—understand me: I say that the idea I have arrived at from Captain Acton's conversation—is that I should carry this ship to a port that certainly is not Kingston nor is it in Jamaica, though I am unable to say more, and that he wishes this vessel to be handed over to the representative of a South American merchant who does business in London. What the port may be I am as curious as you[Pg 243] undoubtedly now are to learn. I believe also that the whole of us from captain to boy will be paid off at this port and sent to England at Captain Acton's expense, and each man will receive treble the amount of the wages that he would have got for his voyage to Kingston and home. All this I infer from Captain Acton's language, and I may be violating his good faith in me in committing even these conjectures to the strict confidence which I am sure you will observe.",

"Well?" His mother's voice dispelled the vision. "Are you goin' to answer me, Willium?",

"What beats all my goin' a-fishing," said Mr Thomas Pledge in a voice which, in spite of its being subdued, and in spite of the noises of the wind aloft, and of waters washing along the bends yearning and seething, was distinctly audible to Mr Lawrence as he stood in the shelter of the companion-way, "is this: this 'ere ship belongs to Captain Acton. His purchase of her was square and above-board.[Pg 300] Why should he go behind his own back, in a manner of speaking, and put a man that was an officer in the Royal Navy in charge to carry her to a port, and sell her by stealth, as though she was a piece of plunder, and the officer in charge ordered to 'and her over to a fence, which, John, as of course you know, is the vulgar name for a man as receives stolen goods? Why is the crew kept in ignorance of Captain Acton's intention? There's no 'arm in a man a-selling of his own property. But I says there is a good deal of 'arm in a man deceiving of sailors for making them an offer to do something which he don't rightfully explain, and which they'd decline to undertake if they'd been told the nature of it."