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Above him he could hear the long roll and growl of the wave-tormented boulders now a dull, heavy fall like the blow of a gigantic mallet, and again a long-drawn crash like shingle grinding down a hillside. But these things he had heard before and had grown accustomed to.
In preaching science to her, he had over-estimated his powers of self-effacement. Suddenly, sinking science for the moment, she looked at him very frankly and began to frown. At the same time she let the Murray slide down to the ground, and he was so charmed with this circumstance that he made no movement to pick it up. "You are singularly inconsistent, Mr. Mallet," she said. "How?"
Still rather sleepy, drinking in chestfuls of the fresh, chill air, they stepped up, drawing their long sea-boots higher, and having to shut their eyes, dazzled at first by a light so pale, yet in such abundance. Yann and Sylvestre took their breakfast of biscuits, which they had to break with a mallet, and began to munch noisily, laughing at their being so very hard.
As I stood noting these various forms and costumes, a large heavy-built man, with florid face, and dressed in a green "shad-bellied" coat, passed through the entrance. In one hand he carried a bundle of papers, and in the other a small mallet with ivory head that at once proclaimed his calling. His entrance produced a buzz, and set the various groups in motion.
The separation from all my old lakers, too, gave me some trouble, for I never met with one of them after parting from Barnet and Mallet, with the exception of Tom Goldsmith and Jack Reilly. Tom and I fell in with each other, on my return from St. Domingo, in the streets of New York, and had a yarn of two hours, about old times. This was all I ever saw of Tom.
I received some time since from Mr. Riddoch, of Falkirk, a sort of iron mallet, said to have been found in the ruins of Grame's Dike; there it was reclaimed about three months since by the gentleman on whose lands it was found, a Doctor by a very polite letter from his man of business.
The outfit required a small mallet made of hardwood faced with thick buff leather, a powerful loading-rod, a powder-flask, a pouch to contain greased linen or silk patches; another pouch for percussion caps; a third pouch for bullets. In addition to this cumbersome arrangement, a nipple-screw was carried, lest any stoppage might render necessary the extraction of the nipple.
"Seven kinds of a young fool, eh?" remarked the stranger, shifting a long-handled axe and a heavy wooden mallet which he carried from his shoulder to the ground. "Well, you ain't no fool, boy, an' I know it, an' that's why I follered you up this trail. I want ter have a little confab with you to-day. Know who I am?"
There was a project connected with his going abroad which it was on his tongue's end to communicate. It had no relation to hospitals or dormitories, and yet it would have sounded very generous. But it was not because it would have sounded generous that poor Mallet at last puffed it away in the fumes of his cigar.
It was small, but not very rusty or dull. Before Agathemer wakened I had it well sharpened. We had found a mallet in the storehouse, and, with this and a cornel-wood peg he whittled with his sheath-knife, Agathemer drove out the broken bit of hatchet handle. He then fashioned with his sheath-knife a good handle of tough, seasoned ash from a piece he had found in one of the buildings.