United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was a desperate fight for more than three hours, and in the end the smugglers kept their word, for they went down with colours flying, under the guns of the brig which was just about to board them. On this occasion, as on every other, Dore behaved so bravely that the captain put him on the quarter-deck, and if he had chosen to follow it, there was the road open to him to become an admiral.
Perhaps he saw such cities as Doré saw London: sullen majesty of arched glooms, and granite deeps opening into granite deeps beyond range of vision, and mountains of masonry with seas of labor in turmoil at their base, and monumental spaces displaying the grimness of ordered power slow-gathering through centuries.
"I was just thinking myself," he said, feeling not for the first time how different Billie was from the majority of those with whom his profession brought him in contact, "how flat it all was. The show business I mean, and these darned first nights, and the party after the show which you can't sidestep. Something tells me I'm about through." Billie Dore nodded.
Again and again we fancy we can descry crumbling watch-towers, bastions, and donjons on the banks of the Tarn, so fantastic the forms of the Causses on either side. What a scene for a Dore!
"Be smart, my lads!" cried Dore. "If we are quick about it, we may run the whole of the cargo before the revenue men are down upon us." Not another word was spoken; every one knew exactly what he had to do. The lugger's crew hoisted out the bales and kegs, and the men who had come off stowed them away in the boats. The lugger's own boat was not idle.
This precinct had a warm, lazy, dusty, southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal, and wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the elder town, at these hours, must be ghostly enough on its neighboring hill. Even by day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Doré, a couplet of Victor Hugo.
Friendly persuasion, self-interest, wounded self-love carried the day. Reluctantly he decided upon the redoubtable sea-voyage. Whether he suffered from sea-sickness or no we are not told. In any case the visit was repeated, John Bull according the great Alsatian, as he was called, what France had so persistently withheld. Dore was here accorded the first rank among historic painters.
I think of Doré taking a sad farewell of his unfinished Vale of Tears; of Dickens tearing himself from the manuscript that he knew would never be completed; of Macaulay looking with wistful and longing eyes at the History and The Armada that must for ever stand as 'fragments'; and of a host besides. Life is often represented by a broken column in the church-yard.
The procession had reached one of the upper rooms, and they were looking down from a window that commanded a sweep of miles of the countryside, rolling and green and wooded. Far away beyond the last covert Belpher Bay gleamed like a streak of silver. Billie Dore gave a little sigh. "There's nothing like this in the world. I'd like to stand here for the rest of my life, just lapping it up."
When the door opened, they caught bits of conversation, Granny’s brogue growing thicker and thicker in her excitement, and Mrs. Dore relapsing, under its influence, into old-country speech. At such times, Maida noticed that Billy’s eyes always “skrinkled up.” They were just putting the finishing touches to the tree when the window darkened suddenly. Maida looked up in surprise.
Word Of The Day