Jephte turf

Jephte turf With its position as one of Asia's leading bookmakers, is always a meeting place for serious bettors. ⭐️ Billy wanted to shadow old Scroggie's ghost and so discover the will; he wanted to seek out the robbers of the Twin Oaks store and earn a reward; he wanted Maurice Keeler with him; he wanted to hear Elgin Scraff's laugh. But all this was denied him. And now a new burden had been thrust upon him, compared with which all his other woes seemed trivial. Old Scroggie's namesake and apparent heir had turned up again. Billy had seen him with his own eyes; with his own ears had heard him declare that he intended to erect a saw-mill in the thousand-acre forest. This meant that the big hardwood wonderland would be wiped away and that Frank Stanhope would never inherit what was rightfully his.,"And yet Nelson," said Lady Larmont, "liked the Merchant Service so well that he was reluctant to leave it to enter the Royal Navy. When he came from his West India voyage in a Merchant ship his favourite saying was, 'Aft the more honour. Forward the better man.'",Mr Lawrence walked on. He thought of old Greyquill when he passed the place where he had stopped to talk. He crossed the quaint old bridge duplicated in the river, which streamed with becalmed surface up here and mirrored with the precision of a looking-glass the hues and shapes of every bird that swept the glassy surface for an insect, and gaining a rich lane formed by seven or eight hundred years of growth, for a monastery had stood here and a knight had had his manor where now the land was without relic of stone or brick; but the vegetation left by these people flourished, and though not above half a mile in length that lane formed one of the most glorious, soothing, enfolding, impulse-creating walks in all that country-side which abounded in little paradisaical reaches of a like kind; I say Mr Lawrence crossed the bridge, and emerging from the lane struck the high-road, and presently gained his father's cottage.,"I wish he'd shut up," he murmured to himself, "but I'm scared to make him, fer fear he'll get sulky an' quit cold on the job.","One morning something over a year ago a queer little man came to my office. He told me his name, Scroggie, but refused to give me any address. He said he wished to make his will and insisted that I draw it up. It was a simple will, as I remember it, merely stating that 'I something-or-other, Scroggie, hereby bequeath all my belongings, including land and money, to Frank Stanhope.' I made it out exactly as he worded it, had it sealed and witnessed and handed it to him. But the old fellow refused to take it. I asked him why, and he said: 'You keep it safe until I send for it. I'm willin' to pay for your trouble.'，"Ho, teacher!" came an answering voice. "We're comin' straight in with the wind. I've got 'em both."，"Is that your opinion, sir?" Captain Weaver asked the Admiral.，"The best course we can adopt," cried Lord Garlies, "is to keep the width of the horizons between us. I will take the western and you the eastern seaboard. This from aloft will enable us to command a large surface of sea. The rig of the vessel you are chasing will determine her for us. If I sight such a vessel on the starboard bow, I will hoist a large red flag at the mizzen-royal-masthead; if on the larboard bow, a white flag at the same place. You will hoist your answering signal and manœuvre to close us; but that shall be as the wind may prove. If you sight your ship, it will suffice if you hoist your ensign at your mizzen topmast head, and an answering signal will tell you that we intend to close with you in chase."Her rising from the table had caused the gentlemen to rise. They went on deck. Lucy said she was tired and would be glad to take some rest; her accommodation on board the Louisa Ann was very wretched, and she had scarcely been able to sleep on account of the gruff voices, the alarming creaking and groaning noises, and a strange hideous smell which probably came from the cargo, all which she must always associate in memory with the Louisa Ann. She wished however to see the Aurora, and for some minutes she stood on the deck with her father and the Admiral beside her, gazing[Pg 386] round the picture as though entranced. Once again her lovely eyes seemed to brood even in their glances; they appeared to dwell with a dreamy delight on what they beheld. Through her parted lips the sweet breeze rushed, and the hair upon her brow flickered like shadows cast by the wavering of a silver flame.

"There's the old Canopus!" cried the Admiral. "Lord, what a shivering [Pg 398]recollection I have of her main topmast cross-trees!",He had been nursed by Lucy from the time of his being slung over the side. The wounds were dressed by her hands. Day after day, hour after hour, she sat beside him in his cabin. She carried his tray of food into his little sea-bedroom, and fed him, or helped him to feed himself. And though at night he was watched by his father, the instructions given were that if the patient expressed a wish for her presence, Lucy was to be summoned, no matter the hour of the night in which the call was made.,But here he found another little hope; some squalls of wet, one very heavy, had set the kennels running shortly after he had met Mr Greyquill, and if that letter had lain exposed to those three or four deluges, it not only stood to be changed into a mere rag to the eye which none would dream of even glancing at, but the writing must have been washed out to a degree to render the sense of the letter unintelligible. He considered that it was not above two or three hours when that letter was in his pocket, and that it must have fallen somewhere betwixt his father's house and the Minorca in that time, for he had taken the same road to and fro. He reflected that that road was but little used compared with the lane that led to the bridge where the Actons' carriage had stopped. Understanding as a sailor the preciousness of time, and conceiving that if the letter had by some strange mischance fallen during his walk unobserved by him it might still rest in the spot where it had dropped, insomuch that chance—for the fellow was a gambler at heart—might concede him yet an hour, even two hours, in which to find it, he put on his hat and marched out of[Pg 153] the house, just saying to his father in the window that he had an appointment and should miss it if he didn't hasten, and then stepped out, casting as he went to right and left of his path eyes as piercingly scrutinising as those which the madman darts when he seeks for the philosopher's stone.,"But what is to be hoped for in a place like this? Here are no industries; there is nothing doing, you cannot turn smacksman or start as a pilot.","I will keep Miss Acton company on deck," said the Admiral.,"Mr Lawrence is very daring," answered Lucy. "I can easily believe that the hunchback [Pg 374]Paul, as he is called, had orders if he did not meet me to go to the house and deliver the letter to me in person.",Mr Eagle approached Mr Lawrence, who turned upon him suddenly.,Meanwhile, Mr Lawrence had gone about three-quarters of a mile and was now approaching his father's home. The Admiral's cottage was in a lane off the main road. It was such an umbrageous retreat as Cowper, had he been in earnest, would have hastened to when he sighed for some boundless contiguity of shade. It stood in a little land protected by hedges and walls full of orchards. The Admiral lived in the heart of groves of cherry, plum, apple, pear, and other fruitful trees which presently,[Pg 52] in this month of April, would make the scene round about as beautiful as driven snow shone upon by the sun, with almond-white flowers.,"Well, what do you think they stand fer?","Nope." Billy shipped his paddle and picked up his oars. Somehow he felt safer then. He believed that men like those behind were capable of almost any crime. What if they should make up their minds to have his ducks anyway? Well, they couldn't catch him now. There were two of them in a heavy skiff and he was alone in his light punt, so let them try it if they wanted to. But whatever might have been their thought, it was clear they knew better than pursue that swiftly moving boat. Quickly they fell behind him and were swallowed up in the deepening shadows.,"Oh, gee whitticker! nobody 'ud believe that, Bill.",The man waited outside for Mr Lawrence. When he appeared he seized his hand, and fell upon his crooked knees and kissed and slobbered his hand, and blubbered, with tears trickling down his face, "that so help him his good God, come what might he would do anything, no matter what, to serve his honour, he would die for his honour; let his honour command him to jump into the river then and there and drown himself, he'd do it if only to please him." His gestures whilst on his knees, his extraordinary grimaces, the strange, wild terms in which he expressed his pathetic gratitude for this condescension of a gentleman in taking notice of, and rescuing from gaol a poor, pitiful vagabond, a child of the parish,[Pg 119] a no man's son, nor woman's either, a creature who lived he could not tell how, sometimes by stealing a raw vegetable, sometimes by running an errand, sometimes by the bounty of a tradesman who might fling him a crust, or of some drunken fisherman who might toss him a shilling to sing him a song and dance as he sang, a performance so hideously uncouth that Hogarth would have immortalised it could he have witnessed it; his gratitude, in short, was so diverting, at the same time moving in its appeal to pity, that Mr Lawrence could scarcely forbear a laugh, and indeed did laugh when he got rid of the fellow and walked away..