StarSports

StarSports Register +128K "Sir, I once said to a sailor who had obtained a berth ashore on sixteen shillings[Pg 148] a week, 'How do you manage to rear your family? How many are there of you?' 'Why,' he answered, 'there's me and the old woman and four youngsters and grandfather!' 'You never see meat, of course,' said I. 'Oh yes, we do,' he answered. 'Meat!' I cried, 'on sixteen shillings a week and seven people to support, four of them hungry youngsters!' 'Well,' he answered, 'I doos it in this way. On Saturday I goes to the butcher and buys a shoulder o' mutton; on Sunday we 'as it 'ot; on Monday we 'as it cold; on Toosday we 'ave what's left of the cold; on Wednesday what's left of the cold we 'ave made into ishee-ashee; on Thursday we makes what's left of the ishee-ashee into ashee-ishee; on Friday we does without; and on Saturday I goes to the butcher and I buys another shoulder of mutton.' Now," the Admiral would say with his face warm with triumph, "name me any joint but a shoulder of mutton that will supply what kept this family in meat, or the like of meat, from Sunday to Thursday?","And this is the way that a look-out is to be kept aboard this ship," said Mr Lawrence with a biting insolence of scorn, and that sort of pity which enrages more than kicks or execrations. "If you don't hold to the instructions you receive from me, sir, you'll[Pg 295] soon find yourself eating black bread in a French dungeon with straw from a sty for a bed.","Now," continued Mr Lawrence, still preserving his lofty, superior, rather over-bearing manner, as though he would heave Mr John Eagle overboard by scruff and breech if the fellow durst utter a syllable of offence, "it is arranged by Miss Acton and myself that she should feign that I have kidnapped her—sailed away with her, in short, against her will. This attitude we preconcerted, to rescue her from the accusation of having eloped, which might greatly prejudice her in the eyes of her father, and injure her future and fortune. When, therefore, you meet her, which you doubtless will, she will probably with the utmost passion, nay, even with tears in her eyes, declare that she has been torn from her home by a base artifice. And you'll understand, Mr Eagle, that her sighs, her statements, and her tears are merely tricks and parts of a play which has been carefully prearranged between the lady and myself. Do you understand, sir?" he added, looking stormily at his mean little companion from the altitude of his elegant and commanding figure.,And with that she fell to singing, from which she broke off after a few moments to burst into a shrieking, lunatic laugh.,"I don't want to go swimmin'" wailed Maurice, "but I do want'a walk a bit out through the woods, Ma."，She turned slowly, stern eyes looking above her glasses straight into his startled and apprehensive ones.，"Well sir, I nigh died when I seen him settin' on our winder-sill," laughed Maurice. "We was havin' mornin' prayer; the new teacher was at our place an' he was prayin'. Croaker strutted up an' down the sill, peerin' in an' openin' an' shuttin' his mouth like he was callin' that old hawk-faced teacher every name he could think of. I saw he had a paper tied 'round his neck so I crawled on my hands an' knees past Ma, an' slipped out. If Ma hadn't been so deef, she'd have heard me an' nabbed me sure."，Scroggie chuckled. "Dad ain't got any use for anybody, much," he answered. "I never heard him say anythin' about any of the people of the Settlement but once, and that was just t'other night. He come home lookin' as if somebody had pushed his head into a crate of eggs. I was too scared to ask him how it happened and Lou wouldn't. Dad said the people 'round here are a bad lot and it wouldn't surprise him if they tried to kill him.""I guess we've struck into the big woods," Billy informed him. "Anyways, the trees are gettin' thicker the further we go."

Billy was still thinking of the only girl when he topped the farther ridge and descended into the valley where stood the haunted grove. He wondered what she would say when he told her the great news he had to tell her. He thought he knew. She would put her hand on his arm and say: "Billy, I'm glad." Well, he was on his way to hear her say it. As he entered a clump of cedars he saw her. She wore a cloak of crimson; her hat had slipped to her shoulders and her hair glowed softly through the shadowy half lights. She stood beside old man Scroggie's grave, a great bunch of golden-rod in her arms.,Lucy touched the keys.,They climbed the fence and crossed the road to the lane-gate.,"It's Anse's. We must have got 'em mixed when we was dressin'.",Mr Lawrence rushed back to his cabin, whence he took from a shelf a telescope of uncommon power for those times, the gift of no less a man than Captain Acton after intelligence had been brought to him of a particular heroic piece of behaviour on the part of Mr Lawrence. With this telescope he sprang on to the deck, and levelling it at the sea over the lee bow, viewed in the lenses the picture of a large man-of-war with two white bands broken by gun-ports. She was far away, yet not so distant but that a[Pg 292] hand's breadth of her black side could be seen shivering in mirage betwixt the lower white band and the wool-white tremble of water running aft. All the men of the Minorca were on deck at work here and there. They looked at Mr Lawrence as with levelled telescope he stood on the quarterdeck viewing the distant battleship. They all belonged to Old Harbour Town; all had heard of him, and a few knew him by sight. They were members of a group of inhabitants who felt that the presence amongst them of a man whose sea story though brief was brilliant did them and Old Harbour Town honour, and they regarded him as he stood with the glass at his eye, as though they should say, "Yon's a man-o'-war, and she may be a Johnny; but there's the Jack who will know what to do with her." And, may be, some of those who thus reflected cast their eyes upon the figure of Mr Eagle, who stood near enough to the Captain to enable the sight to master the details of a very striking contrast.,"Billy!" he cried, "why didn't you shoot?","Likely story that about his pilin' on you from behind," scoffed Billy. "You met him on the path an' tried to get gay with him, more like, an' he pasted you a few. You shouldn't hunt trouble, Anse; you can't fight, an' you know it. What's this new boy like?" he asked curiously.,She smiled and kissed him, and then said: "But oh, sir, his poor old father! You have regained me, your only child, but Sir William, an old, a good man, an upright, a beautiful character, must lose his son, an only child too.",What could the unfortunate, infatuated, handsome rascal say? Her appeal was poignant by virtue of her deep distress, the misery of her condition, the insane disposition of her beautiful face, wild and almost white in its shadowing of hair. What could he say to her? His countenance was filled with the confusion of his mind. His heart beat tumultuously with love that raged with its sense of helplessness. These phrases do not exaggerate a state that nothing but the highest form of genius could delineate in its astounding complexity of adoration, despair, horror at the consequences of his own lightly undertaken act, honour that could be no stranger to a valiant nature, and a resolution to persevere and conquer as a consequence of the character that could lay upon its owner's soul this enormous obligation of the betrayal of the girl he worshipped and the man who had stood his friend when the world was sterile, and he must either flee the country or rot in gaol.,"Why, it's money, you ninny! You kill the robbers an' you get the church collection an' lots of other money besides. Then you're rich an' don't ever have to do any work; jest fish an' hunt an' give speeches at tea-meetin's an' things.","There's never been a ghost that ever roamed nights been able to get near it. You kin ask Tom Dodge er any of the other Injuns if there has.","No other name?—no matter; Paul will do very well for the books.".