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Updated: May 19, 2025
As he saw his trim ship lying peacefully at anchor, and almost within ordinary call; as he saw his household boat, with familiar faces in it, patiently rising and falling, on the short waves by the San Dominick's side; and then, glancing about the decks where he stood, saw the oakum-pickers still gravely plying their fingers; and heard the low, buzzing whistle and industrious hum of the hatchet-polishers, still bestirring themselves over their endless occupation; and more than all, as he saw the benign aspect of nature, taking her innocent repose in the evening; the screened sun in the quiet camp of the west shining out like the mild light from Abraham's tent; as charmed eye and ear took in all these, with the chained figure of the black, clenched jaw and hand relaxed.
Dominick was indeed fully as tall as his opponent, and his shoulders were nearly as broad, but the massive weight of Malines's figure seemed to render the chance of Dominick's success highly improbable. The youth sprang at him, however, like lightning, and, hitting him a violent blow on the forehead, leapt back out of his reach.
On one side of him sat James Spencer, judge of the circuit court, "Dominick's judge"; on the other side Henry De Forest, principal owner of the Pulaski Gas and Street Railway Company. There were several minor celebrities in politics, the law, and business down either side of the table, then Fessenden, talking with Cowley, our lieutenant governor.
The result of Dominick's thinking was that he resolved to consume as much of their stock of provisions as possible in one meal, in order to secure all the strength that was available by such means, and thus fit them for the coming struggle with the surf. "For," said he, "if we get capsized far from the shore, we have no chance of reaching it by swimming in our present weak condition.
Dominick's intentions were undoubtedly good; and when he asserted that it was his purpose to give his father and mother merely an outline of their adventures, he was unquestionably sincere; but the outline became so extended, and assumed such a variety of complex convolutions, that there seemed to be no end to the story as there certainly seemed to be no end to the patience of the listeners.
Father Dominick's people had decidedly need of cork jackets; Father Phil's might drink and be refreshed.
There were not three separate awakenings and three distinct yawns; no, the rousing of one caused the rousing of the others in succession so rapidly that the yawns, commencing with Pauline's treble, were prolonged, through Otto's tenor down to Dominick's bass, in one stupendous monotone or slide, which the last yawner terminated in a groan of contentment.
This reserve, however, had been also exhausted, and it seemed as if the last ray of hope had vanished from Dominick's breast, on the calm morning on which our tale opens. As we have said, the youth glared at something lying in the stern of the boat. It was a tarpaulin, which covered a human form.
No, no even should he be starving he couldn't make money out of Sir Dominick's disgrace. He was almost surprised at the violence of the horror with which, as he shuffled mournfully about, the idea of any such profit inspired him. What was Sir Dominick to him after all? He wished he had never come across him.
Dominick's conduct in the matter of the priest's money was also a happy illustration of that mixture of simplicity and shrewdness with which an Irishman can frequently make points meet, which superstition, alone, without such ingenuity, would keep separate for ever.
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