It proved as the Admiral had said. After a little brandy and water had been poured between the ashen lips, Mr Lawrence opened his eyes. They opened full upon his father, whose face was stooped close to him. Consciousness was tardy in her awakening, but on a sudden the prostrate, bleeding man recognised his father, and with that look of[Pg 440] recognition there must have come to him some vision of memory presenting scenes of his past. He frowned, sighed, turned his eyes upon Captain Acton, and closed them, but not as though he had fainted, for the lids were firm set.
daman-aviator-hack, "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."
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daman-aviator-hack "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.".
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