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"I will tell you exactly," said Lucy, and the Admiral bent his ear. "It was a very fine morning and I was awake early, and I thought I would walk as far as the pier and back, intending to be home before you read prayers. I left Mamie behind, as she has a trick of running into the water, and she swims so badly that I am afraid she will one day be drowned. On the way I met the red-haired hunchback whom I had seen about Old Harbour Town at times. There was something in his manner that made me think he was making for Old Harbour House. He saluted me very respectfully, and gave me a letter written in pencil. In my excitement and alarm I did not know what I did with it. If I put it in my pocket it was not there when I felt. It was signed by Walter Lawrence, who wrote that Captain Acton had come on[Pg 373] board the Minorca, had stumbled over something the name of which I forget, and fallen a few feet into the hold, which lay open. Mr Lawrence believed that Captain Acton was not dangerously hurt, but he was in a very bad way and in great pain, and he had asked Mr Lawrence to write to his daughter Lucy and acquaint her with the accident and beg her immediate presence, but she must on no account make the disaster known to her aunt or to any other member of the household.,

"I saw him two or three times yesterday," said Captain Acton. "He had nothing to say about French cruisers in the offing. Nor did he give me a hint that he was taking the necessary steps to quit this Harbour early this morning.",

"Dead?",

"You can't tell what a girl'll do fer her father," said the other woman dubiously. "But there now," she broke off, "here I am visitin' away with you, jest as though there wasn't a batch of bread riz and kneaded at home, ready fer the oven. When I looked fer my bread-pans blest a one could I find. I know that Billy has lugged 'em off somewheres to use as bath-tubs fer his birds and lizards; so, thinks I, I'll jest run over an' ask Mrs. Keeler fer the loan of hern."

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The bright, mild wind came gushing steadily over the bulwark rail; the decks were slightly sloped, and their seams ran black, as defined as the ebony lines ruled by standing rigging in moonshine, and the planks between shone like ivory. On high the heeling structure was a vast surface of canvas, with three square yards at the fore for the fore topsail and topgallant sail, and over the swan-like stem of this American clipper—for a clipper she was—the immensely long bowsprit and jibboom spread the foot of huge triangular wings which gave the hull a grand and noble look forward, as though she was about to spring from the water in the brilliant flash of foam which darted from the wet and metalled fore-foot, to form one of the squadron of cream-coloured clouds royal in their progress with trailing robes of glory.,

He was lingering on board until the hour when the ordinary at "The Swan" was served, and whilst he stood looking over the rail near the gangway, so profoundly self-abstracted that his eyes, turning idly, seemed without speculation, Mr Eagle came across the planks. He limped a little, and the expression of his face was uncommonly acid with pain and the nature of the man.,

Beneath the shadow of the coming storm the forest gloom deepened to velvet blackness. Suddenly a tongue of lightning licked the tree-tops and a crash of thunder shattered the stillness. A few heavy rain-drops spattered on the branches above the heads of the waiting three. Billy and Maurice, a strange terror tugging at their heart-strings, waited for old Harry to give the word forward. But Harry seemed to be in no great hurry to voice such command. Fear had gripped his superstitious soul and the courage loaned him from the squat demijohn was fast oozing away.,

"What's your name again?" he said.