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"I know you will do this," she replied, "and if my looks betrayed any anxiety, it was not for our safety, but for your own, Captain Ratlin." "My safety, lady? do you then consider that worth your anxiety?" he asked, with unmistakable earnestness in his voice.
"You know, Captain Ratlin, that you need not ask such a question," she replied, as she looked into his face with her whole gentle soul open through her eyes. "You are too kind, too trusting in your confidence in me, Helen," he said.
Be particular to make that Hector of yours knock off from swearing: he's begun, and what's begun in sin is pretty sartain to have an indin'. Talk to him, first, and, if that won't do, rope's-end it out of him. There's great vartue in ratlin stuff, among boys. As for yourself, Neb, hold on as you have begun, and the Lord will have marcy on you, before the v'y'ge is up."
No sooner had the court, through its head, addressed the witness, than he answered promptly the preliminary queries put to him, while the effect upon Captain Ratlin seemed to be like magic. Was it guilt that made him start so, rub his eyes, look about him so vaguely, and then sitting down, to cover his face with his hands, only to go through the same pantomime again?
Huntington, to say nothing of her daughter, saw something more than mere honest admiration in the enthusiastic girl's remarks about the young commander, and the mother shrewdly determined to question her upon the theme, and to weigh well her answers. "Captain Ratlin is very friendly to you, I suppose, Maud?" said Mrs. Huntington.
Therefore when Captain Ratlin left them, it was with a promise to return and join them again within a few hours. He resolved to moor his vessel under the shelter of the present favoring darkness, to which end he at once repaired on board. The two English ladies, both mother and daughter, found much to interest them in Maud Leonardo.
All that could prejudice the court against the prisoner was duly paraded before the eyes and ears of the individual members ere yet the case was brought legally before them, and at last when Captain Ratlin was formally brought into court, he was little less than condemned already in the minds of nine-tenths of the marine court.
He was not repulsed, nor chided, but she delicately rose and turned to her mother's apartment. How small a things will affect the whole tenor of a life time; trifles lighter than straws are levers in the building up of destiny. Captain Ratlin turned from that brief interview with a feeling he had never before experienced.
"Ay," said the girl, quickly, and with a shrill cadence of voice, "a double heart should be dealt doubly with. It was I who led these people hither, and I hoped the fate of so many of your ship's company might have been yours! but you are a prisoner now, and there's hope yet!" "Maud, Maud! have I ever wronged you or your father?" asked Captain Ratlin, reproachfully.
These tops hung overhead like three ruinous aviaries, in one of which was seen, perched, on a ratlin, a white noddy, a strange fowl, so called from its lethargic, somnambulistic character, being frequently caught by hand at sea. Battered and mouldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left to decay.
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