www 9xflix

Asian Online Casino: Where Passion and Skill Meet!",

"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!",

Wax candles burning purely and softly in sconces and candelabra illuminated an interior of singular elegance and rich in luxury. Lucy started from the piano, the sounds of which had been audible outside before the gentleman opened the door. Her beauty, her costume were in exquisite keeping with the objects which filled that room, the repository of the tasteful and sumptuous selections of several generations of Actons. Lucy's garb was the picturesque attire of that age: the neck and a portion of the bosom were exposed; a handsome medallion brooch decorated the bust; the arms were bare to above the elbows; the girdle gave her gown a waist just under the bosom. In that light all that was tender and lovely in her gained in softness, sweetness, and delicacy. Her rich bloom had the divine tenderness of the flush of sunset when in the east the velvet deeps are enriched with the diamond-throb of the first of the stars.,

"Billy, is ut clane crazy ye've gone?" chided the old man, "that ye'd be afther deafenin' the poor steed wid yer yellin'? Listen now, fer ut's more I'll be tellin' ye.",

"Only the other day," replied Lucy, "I told Mr Eagle, the mate of the vessel, that I could not imagine a pleasanter trip than a voyage to the West Indies in the Minorca, but I stipulated that the sea should be always smooth."

Register +188K

For some time after he had closed his knife and fork he sat at table shading and supporting his forehead with his hand, his elbow resting, and deep thought was in his attitude. To one who knew his story he submitted a picture for memory to cherish. Night was near, though not yet come, but[Pg 299] its shadow was upon the ship, and three or four stars like little balls of quicksilver ran to and fro athwart the gleaming black panes of the skylight glass. The hum of a steady breeze in the stout shrouds, in the cat-harpings, in the drumming hollow of many sails sounded like the strains of an organ muffled to the ear by the walls of the church that holds it. The low thunder of the surge washing past the ship was as constant as its accompaniment of the concert of creakings, jarrings, shocks in bulkhead, rudder-post and strong fastenings.,

"Mr Lawrence would represent the voyage to the West Indies as beautiful, wonderful, and indeed magical, as an Arabian Nights dream," said Lucy. "But you did not tell me of cockroaches, sir," she added with a smile, and with one of those looks which in her seemed a brooding or dwelling of the eye, though if judged of its effect by time the look was scarcely more than a glance; yet this was[Pg 105] the consequence of the peculiar beauty of her heavy lids rendered yet more languid by the fringes through which the large dark brown orbs of vision directed their gaze. "And you said nothing about the beef blue with salt which creates thirst before it is tasted.",

The girl's eyes grew wider and wider with wonderment. "Isn't it strange?" she half whispered, "and beautiful?",

Anson, sitting slit-eyed and gleeful close beside him, received the slap with a force that knocked his face into his porridge bowl.