United States or Mali ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His dark auburn hair, in short ringlets parted in the middle, gave his sunburnt countenance a likeness to some of the old gentle families with which he was allied, his father having been a son of younger sons, in a date when primogeniture prevailed in all this bay region; and therefore, possessing nothing, he went into the war against England as a sailor, and his family influence obtained for him command of the new privateer launched on the Manokin, the Ida, which set sail with a good crew and superior armament, amid the acclaims of all Somerset, and, sailing past the Capes into the ocean with all her bunting flying, slid down the farther world to everlasting silence and the vapors of mystery.
They now sailed out of the thoroughfare into the broad mouth of the Manokin, where a calm fell upon air and water for a little while, and they could hear smothered music, as of drum-fish beneath the water, beating, "thum! thum!" and crabs and alewives rose to the surface around them, chased by the tailor-fish.
"Jack," he said, "I'm a-going to find Levin an' that nigger trader. I may git in a peck of trouble up yonder on the Nanticoke. Tell all the pungy men whair I'm a-goin', an' what fur." "Can't I do somethin' fur you, Jimmy? Can't I give you one o' my bell-crowns; thair's a-plenty of 'em left." "Take my advice, Jack, an' tie a stone to all them hats and sink' em in the Manokin.
The Manokin, spreading wider as it flowed farther from the town, and widening from a brook to a creek, till it moistened fringes of marsh and cut low bluffs into the fields, never seemed to invite him so much to wander along its sluices as this morn. "If my wife would only walk with me into the country," he said, restlessly, "how more companionable we would have been to each other!
She stole a startled look at him out of her listening eyes, as if this might be unpleasant talk, but he parried it with a compliment. "Chis! Dios! What a family of beauties you were! Betty, with her hoyden air, and Jane, with her wealth of charms, and Patty, with her bold, rich eyes and conquering will. We sailed into the Nanticoke by mistake for the Manokin.
Teackle Hall, according to rumor, was built at the close of the revolutionary war by an uncle, or grand-uncle, of Judge Custis, who came from Virginia, somewhere between Accomac and Northampton counties, and went into shipbuilding on the Manokin, adding some privateering and banking, too, and once, going abroad, he brought back from some ducal residence the plan of Teackle Hall, as Judge Custis found it on his coming into the property.
"And dear old Princess Anne, how does she fare?" he had again turned to the Judge "how is the little river Wicomico no, I mean Manokin how does it flow? Does it flow benevolently? Does it abound in the best oysters I ever tasted? in tarrapin, too? How is she now? Goy!" "Are you on your way north, Brother Custis, or going home?" the keen, black-eyed Chief-justice asked. "No, my journey is ended.
Lest he might not be suspected of curiosity, Levin continued on to the bridge at Manokin landing, and counted the geese come out of a lawn on a willowy cape there, and take to water like a fleet of white schooners. He ascended the rise beyond the bridge, and looked over to see if Meshach might have taken a walk down the road.
Then returning, he swept the back view of Princess Anne, from the low bluff of cedars on another inhabited cape on the right, which bordered the Manokin marshes, to the vale of the little river at the left, as it descended between Meshach's storehouse and the ancient Presbyterian church of the Head of Manokin, seated among its gravestones between its hitching-stalls and its respectable parsonage manse.
"Not quite, sir, through the thoroughfare; it's nigh eighteen. We've got four hours and a half of daylight yet." "Then stand for the head of Manokin an' obey all my orders like a 'listed man, an' I'll git ye and yer mother a plantation, an' stock it with niggers for you. Come, brace up again!"
Word Of The Day