United States or Moldova ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At this moment a clerk from the landlord's office arrived and handed Nettings a paper. "Here you are," said Nettings to Hewitt; "they've found a specimen of Goujon's handwriting at last, if you'd like to see it. I don't want it; I'm not a graphologist, and the case is clear enough for me anyway." Hewitt took the paper. "This" he said, "is a different sort of handwriting from that on the paper.
"I don't believe there is a head to it," declared Nettings; "nor a tail either. He's kidding us." Nettings was better than his word, for within two hours of his conversation with Hewitt, Goujon was captured and safe in a cab bound for Bow Street. He had been stopped at Newhaven in the morning on his way to Dieppe, and was brought back to London. But now Nettings met a check.
The boarding nettings were at once triced up, the small arms got from below, and the guns loaded. I inquired anxiously for Mary and her mother, who were not on deck. "They suffered much during the hurricane, but are now on foot, and will be glad to see you," answered the captain. I sprang below.
Once a shot knocked some hammocks out of the hammock nettings, and grazed the mainmast just as I had passed it, and another took off the head of the boatswain's mate, just as he was raising his hand to signify that he understood an order I had given him. I consequently walked on till I met the boatswain, and delivered the order to him that he might see it executed.
He said nothing, but just touching the spar with one hand, so as not to sink it deeper in the water, he shoved it on till we reached the wreck. The hammock nettings were just above water, and afforded us a better resting-place than we could have expected. "Thank you! Thank you!" I said, as the man hauled Dicky and me into this place of refuge. "What shall we next do?"
Having noticed that the two cabin-boys were heedless, she had determined herself to keep watch over the magazine. She did so till the danger was past. The captain took in his light sails, hoisted his boarding nettings, opened his ports, and stood on upon his course. The privateer waited till the ship was within a mile, then fired a gun to windward, and stood on her way.
For bringing his four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world.
When "hammocks" was blown by the ship's bugler at a quarter to seven, we found it difficult to make our way forward to the nettings. One moment we were toiling up the deck's steep incline; the next, the ship would bury her prow, and we were rushing forward pell mell. The boat seemed to be endowed with diabolical intelligence that night.
And a second fearful rush was made, which bore the three gentlemen, firing as they went, right up against the nettings. "Bill," halloaed the man who was holding on to the foremost tackle, "lower away; we shall be rushed and swamped!" Bill obeyed with heart and soul, and down sank the boat below the level of the upper decks, just as the mob was getting the mastery.
"Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger and your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe enough." "I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose why, hang it, you must have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting upstairs, and walked out.
Word Of The Day