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He glanced at the door. Mrs. Keeler's square form interposed itself staunchly between him and that means of exit. His wild eyes strayed to the face of his chum. Maurice was grinning a glad, if swollen, grin. There was nothing to do but face the music. Shortly before twelve the people of the Minorca beheld on the starboard bow one of those bland and beautiful pictures of the sea which have vanished from the face of the[Pg 328] waters to be seen no more. The Lizard was painted in a soft, blue looming mass against the sky, and to the right of it upon the sea-line, there sprang like stars in their rising, the white cloths of ships—a numerous convoy from Torbay; they rose fast with a pleasant breeze on the quarter, and one hundred and sixty sail could have been counted with three line-of-battle ships and some frigates to look after them. They were of all rigs known in those days, from the commanding Indiaman armed like a man-o'-war, hoisting her huge main and fore-yards by jeers, loosing her vast topsails out of the tops, clothed as no ship now goes clothed with sprit-sail and sprit-topsail, water sails and other devices in canvas to catch even the faintest cat's paw that should tarnish the burnished calm, down to the little snow bound to Lisbon; a gallant, an imposing, a splendid sight, when every hull was shaped upon the sea which seemed to be transformed into a mighty plain, brilliant for leagues with the shining white cones of tents. Billy pinched off a fox-tail stock and chewed it thoughtfully. "Maybe," he said, cheerfully. "He certainly tapped you some, but then you're always huntin' trouble, an' it serves you right.".
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The shower was over in a few moments and all prepared to leave the barn for the house.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
May Nell didn’t understand, but thought it best to answer in the affirmative. Beyond that she said nothing, but trudged along by his side till they came to the road and turned toward the haunted house, when he took her suddenly in his arms and walked on in the deepest of the dusty ruts.
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Conrad
Captain Acton resumed his walk, and the Admiral rolled by his side beating the ground. This vessel was the Minorca, which, as we[Pg 235] know, had left Old Harbour shortly after eight o'clock that morning, and now she had shrunk the Mother Country into a delicate vision, and slightly leaning from the wind was sliding with a steady keel through the water which beautified the copper that shone ruddily under her weather-bow with the prisms and crystals and gems of the ocean fountain. In spite of Admiral Lawrence's admiration of her, she would excite laughter in this age as an example of the stump-ended fabrics which the shipwrights of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries were building for sailors. Yet many of these structures made wonderfully long voyages and kept the seas, touching here and there to careen, for as lengthy a period as the average life of the modern steel fabric. Billy passed on slowly after his cows, up through the spicy pines to the pebbled beach of the lake, pondering for a solution to the biggest problem his young mind had ever had to wrestle with. He seated himself on the prow of the big fish-boat, his eyes on the thirsty cattle now belly-deep in the blue water, drinking their fill. Along the shore stood the big reels used for holding the seines and nets when not in use. The twine had been newly coal-tarred and the pungent odor of the tar mingled pleasingly with the breath of pine and the sweet freshness of the sun-warmed water. Maurice was off like a shot. As he rounded the house on a lope he ran into Billy, coming from the opposite direction. Billy's cotton blouse was bulging. In one hand he carried the smoking bake-pan, in the other a fat cookie deeply scalloped on one side..
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