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Meanwhile, the boat of one of the traders named Terry an old ex-man-of-war's man had come off, manned by half a dozen of his stalwart half-caste sons, and although it was still pitch dark, and the din of the gale sounded like fifty railway locomotives whistling in unison, and the brig was only revealed to the brave fellows by the white light of the foam-whipped sea, they ran the boat under the counter, and stood by while a number of women and children jumped, or were pitched overboard, to them.
If it were failure the knowledge would come none too quickly; if success, in any degree, he contemplated instant flight, for he was obsessed by the belief that then he would somehow stand in imminent peril. He was pacing the long platform when the afternoon train arrived, but his bloodshot eyes searched the crowd in vain for a sight of General Herbert's stalwart figure.
There were huge stalwart men, brown with exposure, long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden legs and crutches; diseased ones, with running sores peeping from ineffectual wrappings; there was a villain-looking pedlar with his pack; a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of their trades; some of the females were hardly-grown girls, some were at prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen, foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; there were three sore-faced babies; there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings about their necks, whose office was to lead the blind.
Then onward through a couple of rooms handsomely draped with curtains which gave them the appearance of tents, and into a much larger apartment, upon a broad divan in which, dimly shown by a couple of brass lamps, lay the insensible figure of a stalwart Baggara, the blackest they had yet seen, his glistening skin showing strangely in contrast with the white folds turned back from his broad chest, and hideously stained with blood.
Then the stalwart figures of the picturesque fellows, with their white kilts gleaming through the darkness, came again into sight, seeming wilder and more imposing in the alternating glare and gloom of the torches and the deepening night. The man in tweeds was no longer visible. Our innkeeper was alone in front.
Surely none; unless it issue from the lips of that one confiding friend, whose last words upon earth thanked and blessed him, and whose long agonies he watched with unshaken purpose, conscious that in every convulsive change in the familiar face, and every pang that shook the stalwart form, he saw the result of his own work.
I shall live to be revenged upon you yet for these affronts!" and his dastard heart burned with the fiercer malignity that he had not dared to meet the eagle eye, or encounter the strong arm of the upright and stalwart young man. Gnashing his teeth with ill-suppressed fury, he strode into the hall just as Mrs. Rocke and Clara, in her traveling dress, descended the stairs.
He was youngish, stalwart and the look out of his blue eyes was fearless. He came forward slowly, examining his visitor, and his manner was not altogether hospitable. Harry decided that he had to deal with a difficult customer but he had no idea of turning back. "Good morning," he said politely. "Good morning." "I wish some breakfast and I will pay. I've ridden all night in our service."
They appeared to be of different sizes, and differently dressed: for, even through the film, it could be seen that their garments were of various cuts and colours. Some were stalwart fellows, beside whom were others that in comparison were mere pygmies. These Snowball said were the "pickaninnies," the children of the taller ones. They were in different attitudes too.
And indeed a fine sight it made, the straining horses, the stalwart figure of the Ploughman, with the blue sky, the long, brown furrows, and, away and beyond, the tender green of leaves; while the jingle of the harness, the clear, merry, whistled notes, and the song of a skylark, high above our heads, all blended into a chorus it was good to hear.
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