Wild Tigers I Have Known

Wild Tigers I Have Known Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of “Miss Gordon, with all his book larnin’ he knowed no more ’bout black-jack than I know ’bout divin’ fer pearls, and the Bullock boys thort he was no good anyhow, ef he couldn’t beat their Par at cards. So one mornin’ they met him as he was goin’ to school, an’ they give him a good beatin’ up, then flung him in Rodd’s creek to cool him, bein’ winter. He crawled outer the creek, Miss Gordon, an’ never went to the school no more. It shorely was a jedgement on him fer playin’ those wicked card games. Moses, parse the ketchup.”,"Then Miss Lucy hasn't been found, sir," said the Captain.,"Then I'll be tellin' ye where I do be gettin' the whisky, Billy; where else but in the ha'nted house.",Billy whistled. "But fifty sticks, Maurice! It's almost more'n she'll need, don't you think?","Something at sea must be left to chance," said Captain Acton a little impatiently. "Since you cannot be ready before Saturday Sir William and I will have time to weigh your conjectures and views. I shall be down early to-morrow morning, and hope to find that you have made a fresh and vigorous start in getting the vessel ready for sea."，“Your people and the Mexicans—they do not get along together?”，"Have you any rose-water?" goes on Miss Mansergh in her matter-of-fact manner. "No? A good sign that tears and you are enemies. Well, I have, and so I shall send it to you in a moment. You will use it?"，"That's one on you, Tom," laughed the man named Jack. "Quit roasting the kid. We'd have been mired yet if it hadn't been for him."“No; but I stop here sometimes. Are you afraid of ghosts?”

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.,"No, I am not afraid," says the girl, resisting his effort to put himself before her; and when he would have spoken she puts up her hands, and warns him to keep silence.,Billy turned puzzled eyes on his friend, reading a wonderful happiness in the glowing face. He dropped his ducks and followed Stanhope inside. The table was set for dinner and Billy sniffed hungrily.,"You are placed in the most helpless situation a woman could find herself in: at sea, locked up in a cabin, and all the crew, who might otherwise have helped you, believing that you were running away with Mr Lawrence, and that your imprisonment and your representations and your madness were part of a programme preconcerted between[Pg 411] you and your lover. You realise the horrors and peril of your position, and by virtue of the mother's genius that came to your help, you decided upon a behaviour which you magnificently conducted. So much for the better part of you: but what remains? To be wooed—shall I say won?—it is necessary for your sweetheart to act the part of a scoundrel. He must steal my ship and kidnap my only child, and heap lie upon lie, and then, to be sure, he is a very pretty gentleman, a noble, gallant rogue, at root a man of a lordly soul, of a most chivalrous and fighting spirit to be made much of—in short, to fall desperately in love with.",This was deliberately delivered and clearly heard, and, with a flourish of his hand, Lord Garlies stepped back.,The deacon, a florid, full-whiskered man of about sixty, glowered about him. No one present thought of disputing his assertion. The deacon was a power in the community.,“Why not?” asked Bob.,She turns through a broken gap into a ploughed field, and breaks into a quick run.,Nolly alone of all the group stands aloof, joining not at all in the unspoken congratulations, and feeling indeed like nothing but the guilty culprit that he is.,At this he would have drawn her into his arms, hoping her gayety may mean forgiveness and free absolution for all things said and done the day before; but she recoils from him.,Patricia, Hannah Ann, and the Haldens met on the blue rug, and Patricia was the first to find her voice.,"Nothing makes me so hungry as Lady Lilias," says Doatie, comfortably. She is lying back in a huge arm-chair that is capable of holding three like her, and is devouring bread and butter like a dainty but starved little fairy. Nicholas, sitting beside her, is holding her tea-cup, her own special tea-cup of gaudy Sèvres. "She is very trying, isn't she, Nicholas? What a dazzling skin she has!—the very whitest I ever saw.".