United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By a miracle we traversed safely the rocks and whirlpools of the Iron Gate; by fool-hardy audacity we eluded the pursuit of the Turkish brigantine; by lucky chance we escaped quarantine and the search at the custom-house and after we had left every bugbear behind, I stumbled over a straw under my feet into my grave.
And yet do we find ourselves driven to this apology, since the refinement of us of the brigantine has not yet attained to the point of understanding all the excellence of novelty in morals." "I believe there is a mandate of sufficient antiquity, which bids us to render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's." "A mandate which our modern Cæsars have most liberally construed!
Two or three minutes later I heard some orders given, immediately followed by the cheeping of blocks and the creaking of yard parralls, by which I knew that they were filling upon the brigantine and leaving us. "I could not understand why they had left us all there, alive, but bound hand and foot as we were.
As we could see the brigantine, we also must still be visible from her mast-head, and Myers was probably keeping a watch on our movements. Should we be becalmed before sundown, it was possible that he might make another attempt in his boats to capture us, hoping to catch us off our guard. "He shall not do that, at all events," I thought to myself.
Here lay hid the very keynote of that ambitious character: he stooped to nothing less than greatness for a triumph over his slanderers. I rose betimes the next morning to find the sun peeping above the wavy line of the Scottish hills far up the. Solway, and the brigantine sliding smoothly along in the lee of the Galloway Rhinns.
However, be his motive what it might, he cracked, on every stitch of canvas that the brigantine would bear, as soon as the strength of the squall had sufficiently abated to permit of his bringing her to the wind, making sail from time to time as the wind further dwindled, until he had her under everything that would draw, from the trucks down.
"If you see the livery of the royal authority," he said, haughtily, "you must be sensible it is worn by one who is commissioned to cause its rights to be respected. I demand the name and character of yon brigantine?" "As for character, she is, like any other beauty, something vituperated; nay, some carry their envy so far as to call it cracked!
He would most probably lose the brigantine. "He expected as much," said MacMuir. Mr. Lowrie and Auctherlonnie, the Dumfries bo'sun, both of whom would have died for the captain, assured me of the truth of MacMuir's story, and shook their heads gravely as to the probable outcome.
"What followed I cannot remember, but Watts told me that I was the first to spring up the side of the French brigantine, and that the captain, as I fired my pistol at him, struck off my hand with his sword, and was then himself cut down by the carpenter. There were but nine men on board, and these were soon disposed of by our men, who gave no quarter.
"There is one comfort," Frank said. "The coast from here as far as the Bec is so precipitous, that they won't have a chance of putting the boat ashore until they get past that point, and by the time they are there daylight will have broken." The stars were bright, and with the aid of a night glass the brigantine was kept in sight; the sailors relieving each other at the masthead every half hour.
Word Of The Day