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"In ten minutes they'll be ready for the launching with nae lack of water and provision. Get plenty of wraps and greatcoats. It'll be a bit disagreeable, nae doubt, out yon in the wee craft!" "Wee craft!" The voice of the governor's lady she was clinging to her husband's arm rose shrilly. "You surely are not going to send us out there in one of these miserable cockleshells?" "M'love!"
Through quiet alleyways, cloaked and cowled figures came stealing, six in number men with pilgrims' cloaks about their shoulders, and pilgrims' hoods upon their heads men who carried cockleshells upon the sleeves of their gabardines all converging through the dark walks of the garden to a common centre, and that centre the grassy space before the king's watch tower.
If any officer of the law had questioned him as to his association with a certain mysterious Brotherhood of the Cockleshells whose plunderings and pilferings were the pride of the Court of Miracles and the fear of citizens with strong boxes, he would have shrugged his fat shoulders and shaken his round head and disowned all knowledge of any such unlawful corporation.
Each year saw more of their silver cockleshells putting out from port, and the cheeks of those who blew the sails more violently distended. Looking back on that pretty voyage, we see the reason why those ships were doomed never to move, but, seated on the sea-green bosom of that sea, to heave up and down, heading across each other's bows in the self-same place for ever.
Before nightfall had set in, an island had been seen at a short distance to the north, and they decided at once to make for this; as, if caught in mid ocean by a storm, they had little hope of weathering it in a craft like that in which they were placed; although the natives, habituated to them, were able to keep the sea in very rough weather in these little craft; which, to an English eye, appeared no safer than cockleshells.
In size and armament they were absurd cockleshells even when compared with a modern destroyer, but they were to make themselves superbly memorable. Perry's flagship was no larger than the ancient coasting schooners which ply today between Bangor and Boston with cargoes of lumber and coal.
The girl looked up at him lovingly. "I will always do your bidding." "I have a mind to play my part in this enterprise. I am the king of the Cockleshells and I have returned to authority. Give me your pilgrim's gown, girl, and mind, not a word to the brotherhood. I want to take friend Thibaut by surprise."
The Street Pavement all set out with Pebbles and Cockleshells, and no Dogs or Cats were seen to trespass upon it; and formerly there was a law to oblige all Passengers to take off their Shoes.
We have no account of their visit to the King, but I think he would have welcomed them right warmly, and loved to hear how big souls ride in little cockleshells. We know their names at least: Dubslane, Macbeth, and Maclinnuim. And immediately after this record we are told something that must also in a different way have greatly interested Alfred.
In winter weather too rough for fishing, when the little farms lay idle, this Yankee Jack-of-all-trades plied his axe and adze to shape the timbers, and it was a routine task to peg together a sloop, a ketch, or a brig, mere cockleshells, in which to fare forth to London, or Cadiz, or the Windward Islands some of them not much larger and far less seaworthy than the lifeboat which hangs at a liner's davits.
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