लॉस्ट स्टोरीज़

लॉस्ट स्टोरीज़ Experience Betting at Asia's Leading Online Casino! "Only one thing to do," reasoned Billy, "take what we want an' let the rest go.",Six weeks after the arrival of the Aurora, the worthy, the excellent, the benevolent Caroline Acton, sister of the Captain, departed this life. About a month later news filtered into Old Harbour Town that Mr Lawrence,[Pg 453] who had perfectly recovered his health, had obtained, through influence, which was subsequently traced to Captain Acton, the command of a small Indiaman. Some weeks later old Mr Greyquill was considerably astonished and gratified by the receipt of a draft for three hundred pounds from Rear-Admiral Sir William Lawrence, with a request that he would credit Mr Walter Lawrence with the sum, and rule his name off his ledgers. It was understood that much about this time other troublesome, but not very formidable, debts incurred by Mr Lawrence were discharged by the Admiral; but as it was generally known that he was a poor man, it was confidently assumed, and not perhaps without good reason, that Captain Acton, influenced by Lucy, had supplied the money.,"All hunky. Now you move along, an' if you happen to meet Fatty Watland, er Maurice, er any other boys, don't you let on a word about this.",But today Billy, musing darkly, knew that Scroggie would do what he had said he would do. The big woods was his, according to law; he could do as he wished with it, and he would wipe it out.,Captain Weaver was carrying out the instructions he had received at Old Harbour Town. He was chasing the Minorca. The recovery of Lucy had led to no change in those instructions. Though Captain Acton in his gratitude for the restoration of his child was willing to relinquish the pursuit and to leave the Minorca and the handsome piratical scoundrel who had sailed away with her and Lucy to their fate, he had not revealed his thoughts to Captain Weaver, nor to the Admiral, and the Aurora at this hour of daybreak on a day in June 1805, was steadily stemming in chase of the barque which she was to capture, Captain Weaver did not exactly know how. For the Aurora was unarmed, whilst the Minorca mounted four pieces of artillery, and was in command of a naturally desperate fighting and fearless spirit, one whose neck would certainly be broken by the hangman if he was taken: unless indeed his crew turned upon him, and backed their yards and stopped the ship, that her owner might come by his own, despite Mr Lawrence's levelled[Pg 390] pistol or any threats he might make use of in reference to the powder magazine. "But," Captain Weaver had thought to himself on several occasions, "time enough to know what's a-going to happen when we heave the Minorca into view or draw abreast of her, for who's to tell but that we are bound to miss her, in which case we shall receive her at Rio, providing her skipper hasn't got scent of us and shifted his hellum for another port, and then there can be no blazing away of carronades on one side and a trimming of sail to keep clear of shot on the other."，"He's a mighty fine feller," cried Maurice enthusiastically.，"'And the message,' he says, 'this is ut: "Off Gibson's Grove at tin o'clock,"' says he."，"Yes, Nelson is the great sea-poem of the age," said Captain Acton, "and I find more melody in the thunder of his guns than in the prettiest turns of the poetic measure. Are you going home, sister?""I cannot but think," answered Miss Acton, "that Lucy had a secret hankering after Mr Lawrence. He is exceedingly handsome. In bearing he is superior to any man of quality I ever met, and for fine manners you must look to the aristocracy of this country. He can make a leg with the grace equal to any master of elegant salutations; and though his character is bad, yet there are many points in him which women admire, and I say," she continued, with perseverance and a fixity of[Pg 192] meaning truly astonishing in an old lady who in most matters scarcely knew her own mind, who was easily filled with terror, and who seldom acted without consulting her friends, "Lucy has a secret liking for the man, which could scarcely escape the observation of any one who watched them when they are in company."

"No," Hinter answered. "She didn't anchor off here; water's too shallow. She anchored off Gibson's Grove, five miles up the point. She's on her way back to Cleveland by now.",Two pounds cheese.,Mr Lawrence sat down alone in the plain little cabin of the Minorca on this the first day of the vessel's sailing, and upon the table were placed by Paul a boiled fowl, a piece of boiled bacon, a round of cold fresh beef boiled, a dish of sausages, and two or three dishes of vegetables. Paul having already received instructions placed a tray furnished for a meal beside his master on the table; and Mr Lawrence cut some fowl and bacon, adding vegetables, and filled a small tumbler with red wine, and then,[Pg 264] stepping to the door of the berth in which Lucy Acton was confined, he almost noiselessly inserted the key and softly shot the latch, and resumed his seat, and Paul, bearing the tray of food, knocked on the door, and receiving no reply entered, and the motion of the ship upon a long, steady heave of swell slammed the door to after him.,He made for the Aurora and found Captain Weaver on board. He immediately related Mr Adams' story, and asked Captain Weaver if he had seen Miss Lucy Acton down by the Minorca or near her, or aboard of her shortly before she sailed.,As he advanced, one of the sailors came away from a little crowd of men manifestly with the object of addressing him. This man was Pledge's friend "Old Jim." He was about forty-five, with a neck as long as a piece of broken pillar, and lantern jaws deformed by a growth of mustard-coloured hair sprouting in single fibres. He had but three or four teeth in his gums, two of which shot outwards and lifted his upper lip. He was generally reckoned the ugliest man in Old Harbour Town, and esteemed by his brethren of the jacket as one of the best sailors that ever stepped a ship's deck.,"Stay all night with Maurice," invited Mrs. Keeler. "You an' him kin pile right into bed now and I'll bring you both a bowl of hot bread and milk.",Croaker, mincing in and out among the rag-weeds, led straight across the yard to a tiny ramshackle building which at one time might have been a root-house. Billy, feeling that at any moment an icy hand might reach out and grip his windpipe, followed. It was a terrible risk he was running but the prize was worth it. His feet seemed weighted with lead. At last he reached the root-house and leaned against it, dizzy and panting. Then he looked about for Croaker. The crow had vanished!,But on the uplands the forests grew sparser as the axes of rugged homesteaders, who had followed in the footsteps of Caleb Spencer, bit home. Gradually farms were cleared, rough stumpy fields the tilling of which tested the hearts of the strongest, but whose rich soil gladdened even the most weary. A saw mill was erected on the banks of a stream known as Levee Creek. Gradually the rough log cabins of the settlers were torn down to be replaced by more modern houses of lumber.,"S'elp me, your honour, it's no fault of any[Pg 435] man aboard saving the party you gave the command of this ship to," answered Mr Eagle in a profoundly respectful, obsequious, yet sour and protesting manner and voice as though he had been wounded in a very delicate part of his honour.,"No, it ain't that. I guess maybe she's worried more'n cross, an' she's scared too—scared stiff. Well, who wouldn't be with that awful thing prowlin' around ready to claw the insides out'a people in their sleep?",It is certain, anyway, that about nine months after the return of the Aurora, Captain Acton, Sir William Lawrence, and Miss Lucy Acton, left Old Harbour Town, for the neighbourhood of London, where after an interval, the exact period of which being uncertain, is not of historic value enough to demand research, Old Harbour Town received the news, this time in print, in the Annual Register or La Belle Assemblée, or some such publication of the period, that Mr Walter Lawrence, late of His Majesty's Royal Navy,[Pg 454] only son of Rear-Admiral Sir William Lawrence, K.C.B., was on such a day united in the bonds of Holy Matrimony to Lucy, only daughter and co-heiress of Captain Acton, R.N. (retired).,"Let's hustle," urged Billy. "They may come back any minute.".