United States or Palau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If you agree to come quietly and go through with this thing like a sensible girl, I'll do what's right, but if you don't then I'll do what's wrong, and maybe you won't be so damned anxious to tell your friends about this trip, or spread your story up and down the river. Make up your mind before I land." The water gurgled at the bow again, and the row-locks squeaked.
'I can't row, he said, in his plaintive voice, 'but I can steer better than any of you. The man's composed and unruffled serenity was still undisturbed although the rhythmic beat of oars behind them was growing nearer and nearer, and the creaking of the leather in the row-locks could be heard distinctly. 'I have a revolver, said Purvis quietly; 'and dawn is not quite upon us yet.
If they found that they were not absolutely needed, they were to return without making their presence known to the mutineers and Dan Baxter. The two boys and the old sailor were soon on the way. Care had been taken to wrap cloth around the oars where they slipped in the row-locks, so that the boat moved through the water, as noiselessly as a shadow.
Making directly for the wharf, where his boat was moored, half filled with water, he hastily bailed it out, pushed off, and, dropping the oars into the row-locks, bent to the work before him; for the tide was already beginning to run up, and the course he had to take brought him dead against it for the first two or three miles, after which the tide would be with him, and, if there should not be too much sea, the labor of impelling the boat would be materially lessened.
Yes, there was Phebe; and these others must be his girl Hilda and his son Felix. They were near to him, every word they spoke reached his ears, and penetrated to his heart. They seemed more beautiful, more perfect than any young creatures he had ever beheld. He listened to them unfastening the chain which secured the boat, and to the creaking of the row-locks as they fitted the oars into them.
But when those big spearmen of the Dale had gone a little way the horns' voice died out, and their great-staved spears rose up from their shoulders into the air, and stood so a moment, and then slowly fell forward, as the oars of the longship fall into the row-locks, and then over the shoulders of the foremost men showed the steel of the five ranks behind them, and their own spears cast long bars of shadow on the whiteness of the sunny road.
At midnight, Paul Jones, Israel Potter, and twenty-nine others, rowed in two boats to attack the six or seven thousand inhabitants of Whitehaven. There was a long way to pull. This was done in perfect silence. Not a sound was heard except the oars turning in the row-locks. Nothing was seen except the two lighthouses of the harbor.
The only sounds were of the oars in the row-locks, of the drip from their blades as they rose and made curves in the air, and the low plash with which they dipped again into the sea; while the water in the wake of the boat hastened to compose itself again to that sleep from which it had been unwillingly roused by the passing keel. The boy's heart was full.
I followed, with what notion of help or hinderance I should not find it easy to say, but before I reached the water's edge in fact I never did reach it, and had some difficulty making my way back to the house, I heard the rapid throb of the oars in the row-locks as he pulled through the white opacity.
In a minute or two I could see he was beginnin' to come round an' I didn't quite know what to do. I didn't want to knock him on the head, he hadn't done anythin' to hurt me, an' so I dropped the row-locks overboard, tossed the oars ashore there they are, lyin' among the seals an' got ashore myself.
Word Of The Day