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Register Fast and friendly customer support at is one of its strong points, with a professional team ready to answer all players' questions.⭐️ CHAPTER XX BILLY MEETS A LOVELY GHOST,"Ay, but I wasn't paid to lose my leg," called out the man.,Arriving at the lake the boys learned after careful reconnoitering that everything was clear for immediate action. Not a light glimmered from the homes of the fishermen, to show that they were awake and vigilant.,"Yep," he replied, "we saw that steer, too. We've been waitin' here, hopin' we'd hear your whistle. I wonder what time it's gettin' to be?",He walked to a bed of flowers at which an under-gardener was at work, and said to the man: "Have you good eyes?"，"He objects to service clubs. He said to[Pg 7] a friend of mine, 'Take my advice and have nothing to do with them; they are one of the signs of the times of which I highly disapprove; these assemblies of Army and Navy may in time become dangerous to the Government.' When he was Commander-in-Chief he strongly discouraged matrimony. He hated to have married officers in his fleet, for he said they were the first to run into port, and the last to come out of it. I do not wonder that they declined to drink his health at Bath."，"Well!" was all Wilson could say, and he repeated it to himself several times, dazedly.，"I have given Mr Lawrence the command of my ship, sister," said Captain Acton."Or a fist in the daylight," grinned Maurice. "Well, never mind, Anse," he said consolingly, "you've got one good eye left, but somethin' tells me you won't have it long."

With kindly pressure he obliged the old seaman to resume his seat, and then turned with something of fierceness upon old Greyquill.,"That's the boys," Billy told himself. "I've gotta move fast.",He dropped to the sward and stepped through an unglazed window into the hut. Nailed to one end was a crude ladder. Billy climbed the ladder and peered closely at the log which held the money. To all appearances it was exactly like its fellows, no door, no latch to be seen. And still, he reasoned, there must be an opening of some kind there. He lit a match and held it close to the log. Then he whistled. What he had mistaken for a pine knot was a small button fixed, as he saw now, in a tiny groove. He moved the button and a small section of the log fell, spraying him with musty dust.,"Speculation is idle," exclaimed Captain Acton, with a slight flavour of impatience in his manner. "I am profoundly puzzled. There can be no question from Mr Adams's statement and from my own observation that the fellow who delivered the missive is cabin-boy, or steward, or whatever you please to call him, of the Minorca, chosen by your son, as he admits, though it seemed to me as I looked at him that nobody less likely and less[Pg 188] inviting for such a post could have been found in the district.",The larger of the two men grunted a surly response and with much pushing and swearing they began to laboriously back out of the blind channel. Billy and Moll watched them, the dog growling her antagonism of the interlopers. As the skiff passed his bow Billy noted that the guns lying across the seat were both of the new breech-loading pattern.,"Secret instructions to be read to the officers and crew of the above said Minorca by Mr Lawrence whenever the ship shall have arrived at twenty degrees of north latitude, and about thirty degrees of west longitude.",It was easily seen that the poor old man was deeply in earnest and was to be speedily distressed. It was an affecting exhibition of mental decay, and rough as the company were, they had the good taste to change the subject.,Billy stood up. "I'll tell you what I'm willin' to do, Anse," he suggested. "If you'll keep mum about this thing, I'll let you come duck-shootin' with me an' Maurice tomorrow.","But though you do not prosecute him, sir," said Lucy, "might not his story become known so that he might be arrested for piracy, and charged and convicted on the evidence of his crew?",Finally he seemed satisfied that he was alone. His harsh notes became soft guttural cooes. He nodded his big head up and down in grave satisfaction, tip-toeing from one end of the ridge-pole to the other and chuckling softly to himself. Then suddenly, he vanished from sight.,The Aurora's boat was swept alongside the brig, and Captain Acton and the Admiral clambered over the side up a short flight of steps, and in an instant Lucy was clasped in the devouring embrace of her father. Such an old-world scene taxes the highest gifts of the pen or the brush. This Louisa Ann was about fifty years old; she was nearly as broad as she was long. Her fore-mast was stepped far in the bows; her decks were stained and grimy; the paint had faded out of the inside of her bulwarks. Her sails were patched and so dingy that they might have been coloured as a smack's. Her rusty sides were lined with yawning seams amid which three little circular windows were merged with no accentuation from the dirt-shrouded glass which prevented the sea from entering the blistered, worn, mani-coloured hull. Her sailors looked as though[Pg 359] they were shipwrecked: long-haired, bearded, sallow, in clothes considerably tattered, in aspect melancholy and dejected with lack of nourishment, dullness of sailing and ceaseless motion: for here was the tub wallowing like a buoy in a popple upon a smooth sea, and the frightful weather she would make off Cape Horn or in a gale of wind the imagination of a sailor could readily picture by witnessing her motions now.,"Well, do you believe in my charm now?" Billy asked..