United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was more than double as broad as the ordinary gangway, was carpeted from top to bottom, and on every step stood a blue-jacket, each as steady as if cast in bronze, the line forming, as one might say, a living handrail rising toward the dark sky. Captain Kempt and his wife went first, followed by Sabina and her young man with the two girls in their wake.
"I am proud to find I have the air of one," returns Allan; "but I am only a sea-going doctor." "Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket myself." Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe, which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing.
Marjorie's reply was forestalled by a shout from below; and the girls scrambled down to the beach. 'Come along, you two, said Allan; 'here's Jim Macdonnell, Euan's twin brother, and a lot of the men who were here last year. Greetings were exchanged with the pleasant-faced young blue-jacket and his companions; and then the boys and girls sat down on the stones to talk with their friends.
A blue-jacket stood at the foot of the stairs, one hand lifted in salute. "The Saline, sir, is alongside, and hailing us. The boatswain sent me, sir." We followed the two on deck, and, after one glance about, I led her around the bulge of the cabin to the narrow deck space astern. The boat in which we had escaped had been hoisted into its davits, and we halted in its shadow.
How he got there nobody could tell, not even blue-jacket himself. All he knew was, that the leg of his trousers had caught on a nail, and there he stuck, unable to move either way. It cost the town twenty dollars to get him down again. He directed the workmen how to splice the ladders brought to his assistance, and called his rescuers "butter-fingered land-lubbers" with delicious coolness.
Dorothy saw all levity depart from his face, giving way to a look of sternness and command. Although he was engaged in a joke, the subordinate must see no sign of fooling in his countenance. He said a sharp word to a blue-jacket, who nimbly sprang to the end of the settee, raised his hand in salute, and stiffened himself to an automaton.
Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins a sad losel, we fear who ran away to try his fortunes before the mast, and fell overboard in a gale off Hatteras. "Lost at sea," says the chubby marble slab in the Old South Burying-Ground, "ætat. 18." Perhaps that is why no blue-jacket, sober or drunk, was ever repulsed from the door of the Bilkins mansion. Of course Mrs.
I knew he'd have liked to go round the world as well as I, and he often laughed and said "What's more, Jack, if I'd the money I would. People are very kind to poor wretches like me all over the world. I should never want a helping hand, and the only difference between us would be, that I should be carried on board ship by some kind-hearted blue-jacket, and you'd have to scramble for yourself."
In reality he was in haste to face O'Hara, and the yacht's bows turned, not eastward, but southward, under forced draught, to arrive at the Mahomet in early afternoon. As her flags indicated the Lord of the Sea absent, there was no salute, and, landing in a panama and jacket, in the Collector's Office he gave the sign of mum, and, led only by a blue-jacket, went spying the depths of the Mahomet.
While the blue-jacket was explaining this to the boys, a hoarse voice came from the gunboat's deck. "Schooner ahoy!" it roared. "No, no!" replied the man at the Fairy Belle's wheel. "That's a little the queerest answer to a hail I ever heard," was Jack's comment.
Word Of The Day