They stepped out into plain view of the crow, who was muttering to the gold-piece which he now held before his eyes in one black claw. Croaker lowered his head and twisted it from side to side in sheer wonder. He could scarcely believe his eyes. Then as Billy stepped forward and called him by name his black neck-ruff arose in anger and, dropping his prized bit of gold, he poured out such a torrent of abuse upon the boy and girl that Lou put her fingers in her ears to stop the sound.,
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.,
"I regret to have to say it," said Miss Acton, "but I must think—I cannot help it, that Mr Lawrence's hand is in this strange disappearance of my niece.".
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