Beat Bonanza

Beat Bonanza CHAPTER I At noon Mr Eagle, who had been in charge of the watch since eight o'clock, was relieved by Mr Pledge, and went below. On entering the cabin on his way to his berth, he started and stopped dead on beholding Miss Lucy Acton standing at the table and looking up through the skylight. She had gathered up her hair, but in such wise that had it not been for the jockey-shaped hat which she had[Pg 330] resumed she would have looked as wild as though her tresses hung about her shoulders and down her back as in her berth.,A full moon was veiling lake and bay in sheen of silvery whiteness as Hinter and Erie went out into the August night. Eastward the long pine covered Point swept a dark line against the grey, shadowy rush-lands. Somewhere among the hidden ponds mallards and grey ducks were quacking contentedly as they fed. A swamp coon raised his almost human cry as he crept the sandy shores in search of the frogs whose tanging notes boomed from the boglands.,"It means, o' course, that we'll get no more fish," spoke up the practical Scraff.,Anson looked troubled. "Supposin' I don't know—" he began, but Billy shook his head.,“Jiminy! I’ll have time in the morning,” he said aloud, and hurried on, not slackening his speed till he came to a sharp turn that took the road against the face of a rugged mountain. He hid his wheel and can in a tangle of rose vine and snowdrop, and stood out on the edge of the steep bluff that overhung the rushing river. There bloomed the island. Near the centre a rocky point was aflame with gorgeous poppies; and Billy could smell the fragrance of the snowy wild heliotrope,—pop-corn the children called it.，"Thank ye, miss. Ye mane it kindly, I know," says the woman, wearily. "But the big world is too small to hold one dhrop of comfort for me. He's dead, ye see!"，“Yes, but sit there alone while we row away?” said Olaf.，"She didn't seem as if she even saw me, your honour."“Why not?” returned the other. “It looks like the only way we can go, doesn’t it?”

"Come here, you," spoke a low voice as Croaker settled on the other side of the wood pile, and the crow promptly perched himself on Billy's shoulder with a succession of throaty notes that sounded like crazy laughter, but which were really expressions of unadulterated joy. For this boy who had taken him from the nest in the swaying elm when he was nothing but a half-feathered, wide-mouthed fledgling, and had fed him, cared for him, defended him against cat, dog, rooster and human beings—for this boy alone Croaker felt all the love his selfish heart was capable of giving.,He turned once more to the door but Anson jumped up and caught him by the arm. "Bill," he gasped. "I don't know why Hinter built that fence, cross my heart, I don't. But I'll tell you all I know about the men who're runnin' the rig. I been workin' fer the tool-dresser after school, fer a quarter a night. I've heard quite a lot o' talk among them fellers. Blamed if I could make head er tail of most of it but they mentioned a feller by the name of Jacobs an' they seem plumb scared to death of him. Funny, too, 'cause he's never been 'round there a'tall. Nobody ever comes there but Hinter.","You—" she commenced, her voice tense with passion, "you—" she checked herself. Unconsciously one of the groping hands had come in contact with the soft leather cover of a book which lay on the table.,Stooping, he presses his lips to her hand for the first time. The caress is long and fervent.,"Comfort? I think of nothing else," she says, dreamily.,Major Jen wriggled uneasily in his seat, and carefully knocked the ash off his cigar. He disliked telling what appeared to him to be a silly story, but as such story bore strongly upon the present position of things, and as Maurice was impatiently waiting to be enlightened, Jen was forced to put his scruples on one side and speak out.,"Yes.",On the right side of the fireplace, lying along the wall, is a rude stretcher,—or what appears to be such,—on which, shrouded decently in a white cloth, lies something that chills with mortal fear the heart, as it reminds it of that to which we all some day must come. Beneath the shroud the murdered man lies calmly sleeping, his face smitten into the marble smile of death.,"Catalepsy?" guessed Major Jen, giving his mustache a nervous twist.,Maurice glanced at the message, then his face fell. "Oh blame it all!" he muttered, "another of Bill's sign letters; looks like a fence that's been struck by lightnin'.",No, she never thought he knew anything about anything, and that was so exasperating! He knew very well what the weather was; he knew all the kinds of fish that were for sale at the wharf every day; and he also knew that the old minister was to preach tomorrow; but do you suppose Aunt Grenertsen would believe a thing he told her? “I can’t depend on that,” she would say.,"Is it a long drive, Geoff?" she asks, presently, in a trembling tone, slipping her hand into his in the old fashion. "About six miles. I say, darling, keep up your spirits; if we don't like it, we can leave, you know. But"—alluding to her subdued voice—"don't be imagining evil.".