United States or Bahrain ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As we marched, I told Cludde the purport of my talk with Joe, and he agreed that the course I had insisted on was the right one, though he feared Punchard would have a sorry time when he came within the clutches of the man who bore a long-standing grudge against him.
We had no difficulty with any of them but the bosun, whose massy frame so much depressed the raft that it took the united exertions of six of us to haul it through the upper layer of mud. Joe Punchard came last of all.
Of course, Joe Punchard should accompany me, and when I talked the matter over with him, neither of us had the heart to scheme for our own freedom without regard to those of our fellow prisoners with whom we had become more closely connected through our musical interests.
Captain Galsworthy was a frequent visitor, and though he was past eighty, insisted on giving our boys their first lessons with the singlestick. He died in the year '15, leaving fragrant memories to us who loved him. Joe Punchard is with me still.
But Mistress Nelly Hind, who kept a coffee shop in Raven Street, called Mistress Punchard a croaker and bade her be of good cheer, for she had neither seen nor directly heard from her brother John Benbow for twenty years; yet he was alive and well, and captain of a king's ship, if rumor were not a false, lying jade. "Not that your Joe will ever rise to such a height," she added.
This mark of his confidence gave me very great pleasure, and I set about my preparations with zeal, being busy with them during the days of the trial. Knowing how strongly attached I was to Joe Punchard, Mr. Benbow insisted that he should accompany me, declaring with only too much truth that he himself had little need of Punchard's services while he was fixed to his bed.
That made me so savage I forgot all about his being big and stronger, and I went in at him hot and strong, and the next thing I knew was Corporal Grady was patting me on the back, and there was quite a crowd of our chaps standing laughing, and the corporal says, `Bedad, Punchard, boy, ye licked him foine!
But you won't sneak off like Cyrus Vetch; you can't go with a commission like young Cludde. How much money have you got?" "A few guineas I have saved." "Well, keep them; you may be in a tight place some day, and find 'em handy. You have a hankering for the sea, you say. Then tramp to Bristowe, as your champion Joe Punchard did, and hitch on to John Benbow if you can find him.
Unless we could do something before the flood the buccaneers would without doubt get the vessel off, for she had not sufficient way on when she struck to run her deep into the sand, and they had only to jettison a part of her cargo to float her. I walked apart with Cludde and Punchard, all three of us at our wit's end.
And when in answer to this I told her what Joe Punchard had done to Cyrus Vetch, and the terrible things I had heard the alderman threaten against him, she laughed and said I was too tender hearted for a boy, and Joe Punchard would be none the worse for a basting, and a deal more to the same tune, which almost broke through my determination to say nothing of what had caused the mischief; for, after all, Dick Cludde and Cyrus Vetch were my schoolfellows, and, in my day; for one boy to tell on another was the unpardonable sin.
Word Of The Day