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netvision internet Download +128K "It is good of your Royal Highness," she exclaimed in softly modulated, respectful tones, uttered in a measure that gave them a courtier-like dignity, "to visit me in my loneliness and distress. The great Duke of Clarence, sir"—again she curtsied—"will ever be remembered with love and pride by a kingdom whose glory lies in the deeds of her sailors, for his devotion to the sea, to those who sail it, and who bleed for their country upon it.",CHAPTER XVII THE DREAD DAY DAWNS,"His game you mean.","Perhaps so," returned the old gentleman dryly, "but, you see, I happen to have heard an opinion of friend Ringdo's gentle nature from a certain learned pedagogue, whose wounds I dressed recently. So, my dear young lady, if you will be good enough to keep tight hold of him for a moment, I'll follow my renowned friend into the parlor and learn how Frank is coming along." And suiting the action to the words he edged slowly around the table and, backing into the parlor, closed the door.,"Well, by ding! I don't know but what I do mind. What if you should take a notion, some day, to carve up the side of this buildin', hey?"，"So you're back at last, are you?" she addressed Billy, crossly. "Thought you'd never come. I've been waitin' on that sugar an' stuff fer two hours er more. Now, you go into the pantry and get somethin' to eat, while I unpack this basket. I know you must be nigh starved."，"What's more, Ma, that ol' horse is goin' to stay right where he is, belly-deep in clover, till it gets so cold we'll have to stable him. Then he's goin' to have all the good hay an' oats he wants."，Captain Acton bowed, but his distress was lively."No, sir," was Captain Weaver's answer. "I came on to the wharf as the Minorca was warping out, and talked with Mr Lawrence from the quay-side. I saw nothing of the young lady, who, depend upon it, sir, would have immediately caught my attention had I seen her."

"But do I understand," said Captain Acton, "that you mean that Lucy was secretly attached to the man whose hand she declined, and that she speeds to him at the first call that is made upon her by such a missive as the fellow Paul delivered?","Over to our place. I told her about Ma fallin' an' breakin' the meat-platter, an' I guess she misunderstood. She tried to take me along with her. I had an awful time to get 'way from her.",Billy nodded. "You see, Anse, I knowed that sooner or later you was bound to tell Ma, so I played safe, that's all.",Billy nodded. Jim, had he but known it, might have had everything Billy owned, including Croaker, Ringdo, Moll and the pups.,The bewildered man stared at her as though he was himself bereft of reason. Amazement, confusion, love, pity, horror, doubt were amongst the expressions which ran through his countenance like shadow chasing shadow.,He finished his supper in a very gloomy mood. His character has been imperfectly drawn if it leaves upon the reader the impression that he was no more than a gallant, handsome, hectoring scoundrel, a drunkard, a liar, and a gambler. He was more than this, and better than this. In him was a very great deal of honest, sturdy, British human nature, and amongst those who saw the white skin of his character peeping through the rags and tatters of his morals was the young lady whom he had locked up in his cabin. Was he driving, had he driven her mad? This was an awful thought to him, a figure, a presentment on the canvas of his scheme which his utmost imagination never could have painted. He was passionately [Pg 298]fond of her. In truth he was risking his neck to win her. His inmost sensibility as a man and as a gentleman was in perpetual posture of recoil over the reflection that his hand it was that had made this gently-nurtured, beautiful, adorable girl a prisoner in a little ship that was rolling to a port in which she was to be fraudulently sold. He thought of her in the lovely drawing-room of Old Harbour House: the soft illumination of wax lights; the sweet incense of flowers; the piano whose keys were accompanied by her own melodious warblings; her little dog; all the comforts and luxuries which wealth could provide her with; all that a tender-hearted and loving father could endow his only child whom he loved with. And then he thought of her torn from all this pleasantness and sweetness and elegance, so robed that in a short period she must become beggarly to the eye; after her father's hospitable and plentiful table, fed with the poor fare of a common little ship.,"Then, sir, our policy will be to thrash on for Rio.",Lucy heard a church bell strike: she started from a fit of abstraction, and, turning to move on, confronted an old man who was crossing the bridge. The face of this old man was pale and wrinkled; his hair was long and quite white. His nose streamed down his face in a thin, curling outline; his mouth when his lips were compressed might be expressed by a simple stroke of a pencil.[Pg 30] His eyes were deep-seated and extraordinarily luminous and swift in their motions, and his eyebrows, which were as white as his hair, were so thick and overhanging that they might have passed for a couple of white mice sleeping on his brow. His apparel had that dim and faded look which in fiction is associated with miserliness. His high and dingy white cravat and the tall build of his coat at the back of his head, so sloped his shoulders that they looked to make a line with his arms. He wore a faded red waistcoat which sank very low, and under it dangled a bunch of seals. His knee-breeches left painfully visible the pipe-stem shanks clothed in grey hose and terminating in large shoes, burdened with steel buckles.,She agreed with him with a smile, and with a pleasant salutation of the head, walked on.,"Yes. Very characteristic. I rank Pellew after Nelson.","'Course I do.","And Mr Lawrence," continued Captain Acton, speaking in a cool voice that was almost sarcastic, "little understands the habits and customs of the Merchant Service when he supposes that owners give their shipmasters sealed orders to be opened and read to the crew in mid-ocean, or when they are well[Pg 223] away from their port of departure. This is the practice of our Service, sir, and Mr Lawrence as a Naval man who is ignorant of the habits and discipline of the Merchant ship greatly errs in supposing that the crew will be misled by any such device.".