United States or Gambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Gently he would have drawn her towards the little deck-cabin, guiding her steps, as yet untutored to the motion of the ship, when out of the black chasm, upon the weather bow of the Peregrine, leaped forth a yellow tongue of light fringed with red and encircled by a ruddy cloud; and three seconds later the boom of a gun broke with a dull, ominous clangour above the wrangling of sea and wind.
To him was given the little deck-cabin, large enough for a man to stretch out on the seat which ran round it; here, also the clergyman volunteer was presently permitted, and here too, thanks to passports vouch-safed by the chief of police, the chroniclers of the expedition, Mr. Suydam of the Brooklyn Eagle, and myself.
"I feel sure you will sleep to-night," she said soothingly, "if you will do as I tell you." "I'll do any mortal thing. I've got a deck-cabin to myself. Will you keep willin' me when you turn in?" "Go to bed now," she said firmly. "Undress quickly, and then think about nothing ... and I'll do the rest." "You will, you promise?"
The crew were forward, with the solitary exception of the man steering the vessel from his elevated position on the bridge; and sitting as they were, abaft the deck-cabin, the two were utterly alone between the great silence of the stars and of the sea. She looked into his face, and it was tender towards her that night was made for lovers and tears of happiness stood in her eyes.
Vanstone, the captain, might mislay his temper, and the first mate expend himself in polysyllabic invective, young Penberthy cease to dream, stewards, engineers, carpenters, cooks, quartermasters, seamen, firemen, do their most willing and urgent best, nevertheless the morning of next day, and even the afternoon of it, still found Richard Calmady seated at the locker-table of the white-walled deck-cabin, his voyage towards self-obliteration not yet begun.
Even Bunner never heard of him, and can't imagine what the business in hand was. All I know is that when I went up to London last week to attend to various things I booked a deck-cabin, at Manderson's request, for a Mr. George Harris on the boat that sailed on Monday.
When all was ready Edgar issued from the deck-cabin, in which he meant to dress, to take a final look at the air-pumps. In the flutter of excitement he had for one moment, and for the first time since the beginning of the voyage, totally forgotten the existence of Aileen.
The young third officer 'came round' after five minutes of this; but, strangely enough, in the end he was found to be suffering from a severer shock than Mr Markham, on whom the doctor operated for a full twenty minutes before a flutter of the eyelids rewarded him. They were carried away the third officer, in a state of collapse, to his modest berth; Mr Markham to his white-and-gold deck-cabin.
No signs of troubled times were to be seen in the floating home of the wanderers. The steward had provided for everything. There were rooms and beds to spare in the vessel; the large deck-cabin was a comfortable sitting-room, and from the little galley at the prow came a savory smell of cooking and a cheerful clang of pots and pans.
The doctor closed the door softly, and some minutes later paid a visit to Mr Markham, whom he found stretched on the couch of the white-and-gold deck-cabin, attired in a gray flannel sleeping-suit, and wrapped around the legs with a travelling rug of dubious hue.
Word Of The Day