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chess card game with a solid reputation that has been built over many years, is not only a bookmaker but also a place where every player comes to experience undeniable reliability and quality of service.⭐️> Mr Short occupied the head of the table, and the oldest frequenter who happened to be present the foot. Mr Short took his seat when Mr Lawrence sat down, and all the people who had come to eat were then assembled. In a picture they would figure as a homely old English lot: men in bottle-green coats, in red coats, in purple waistcoats, in plain pilot cloth, here and there a dandy built up in the latest style, here and there an old fogey who stuck to the fashion of the last[Pg 126] century and figured in a little tye wig, a frill very fit for the harbouring of snuff, a cut-away coat with immense pockets, such as Boswell might have been found drunk in, in Edinburgh, and shoes with buckles.,"Well," said Captain Acton, "I may say of Nelson as Pope said of Dryden: Virgilium tantum vidi. I was on the Hard when two Naval officers came ashore. I was thinking of other matters, and scarcely observed them until they were abreast or a little past me. Then my glance going to one I instantly perceived he was Nelson. His companion, I believe, was Troubridge. In the glimpse I got of Nelson's face I was struck by its paleness and careworn appearance. He looked at least fifteen years older than his age. They passed rapidly out of sight. I cannot express the emotions which that one-armed little figure excited in me—St Valentine's Day, the Nile, Copenhagen!","Has she returned home?" asked Captain Acton.,Maurice swallowed hard, "I'm blame fool enough fer anythin' since I got knocked silly by that bolt," he answered, "so I'm game if you are.",The Admiral viewed his son critically. The walk home, followed by a sousing of the face in cold water, had helped to attenuate the lingering fumes in the young man's brains, and on the whole his mind was about as steady as could be expected in one who was always more or less under the influence of drink.，From the moment the ship in sight was reported expectation aboard the Aurora sprang and grew. Was she the Minorca? She was undoubtedly square-rigged, but the lenses of the comparatively feeble telescopes of those days could not determine before it fell dusk, whether she was rigged aft with square yards or merely with the mizzen and gaff topsail which made the Minorca a barque.，Erie sat down opposite to Billy, and watched him while he ate. He smiled across at her. "Your Dad seems a whole lot better," he said.，"I was goin' down the path to the road, Anse with me, when the teacher went past, runnin' fer all he was worth. Come to think of it his coat had been clawed some, an' I remember now his face was bleedin' from a scratch er two. He didn't see us an' he didn't stop. He kept right on goin'. Anse an' me went on to the school, an' there we found Ringdo jest finishin' the teacher's lunch. I brought him back an' put him in his cage. That's all, Ma, an' it's every blessed word true."Wilson whistled softly. "You don't say!" he managed to articulate. "Why, Mary, it's a pipe!"

Mr Lawrence went close to him and shouted.,Billy, who was thinking hard, looked up at this. "But," he said sternly, "you said, only a few minutes ago, that you were done forever with whisky.","Ha!" exclaimed Captain Acton, looking fondly at his child, "I don't doubt it is in you. But you have suffered it to rest as an unsuspected quality.","But we kept right on trackin—" put in Maurice, eagerly. "After the stars come out again, of course," explained Billy, managing to skin Maurice's shin with his boot-heel, "an' we found her—","Aw, say, Bill," protested Maurice, "I'm tired an' wet as a water-logged plank. Let her go. I'll tell Dad, an' he kin come after her tomorrow.","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.","And how much more?" cried the Admiral, with a flush in his cheek, and with that expression of triumph and pride which lighted up the eyes of men in those days when they pronounced the magic name of Nelson. "I[Pg 9] should like, I should much like to meet him, to see him, to grasp his hand, for a minute only before my windlass is manned for the next world.","But, Mary, there's a doctor at Bridgetown now and—","Sorry to have kept you waiting so long, Admiral!" exclaimed Captain Acton.,But the essential object of Captain Weaver and the very first desire of Captain Acton and the Admiral was the overtaking of the Minorca, her capture, and the rescue of Lucy. To this end it was extremely necessary that they should speak ships to ascertain if the barque whose rig would make her remarkable had been sighted or spoken, and if so when and where? They had fallen in with two or three vessels which after very careful inspection they had considered safe to speak. But they could obtain no information. Nothing answering to a ship rigged as the Minorca was had been sighted. So Captain Weaver stuck as best he could to his course for Rio, though much hindered by opposing winds. It was to be hoped if the Aurora lay fair in the wake[Pg 346] of the Minorca that the winds which had delayed the schooner had also baffled the barque.,A gleam of satisfaction lit Anson's shifty eyes. "All right," he said shortly, and went off after the herd.,Mr Lawrence pocketed the packet with a bow. Occasionally his eye went to Lucy, but he never suffered it to dwell, nor indeed did he seem to mark his sense of her presence by any particular behaviour. He was perfectly sober, his eyes clear and beaming, his cheeks painted with a little colour, and his apparel showed care. His father glanced at him and seemed well pleased, and Lucy owned to herself that she had never seen him look more handsome, and that somehow or other no stage seemed to fit his peculiar type of beauty more happily, with a subtler blending of all qualities of its furniture with the spirituality of the man, than the deck of a ship with the rigging soaring..