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Updated: June 11, 2025
They were about to pass our friends when the elder of the pair an old gentleman in blue, with a ruddy complexion and apoplectic neck glanced up casually, uttered an exclamation, and came to a halt. Leaving his companion to stare, he advanced towards Captain Runacles and saluted him with punctilio. "This is a great pleasure," he observed in very good English.
"I really don't know his name; but he was accompanied, to be sure, by a Captain Salt when I met him at Vlaardingen." Captain Barker groaned. "But excuse me," pursued the old gentleman in blue, still addressing Captain Runacles, "I spoke not only of a young man, but of a message. Did he deliver it?" "If you mean Tristram Salt, I have not clapped eyes on him since the 1st of May last."
That night he left his watch for an hour only, when shortly before dawn Captain Runacles came to relieve him, threatening mutiny unless he retired to snatch a little slumber. But the sun was scarce up before the little man reappeared. The pride of his old profession was working like yeast within him.
"A while ago," interposed Captain Runacles sharply, "it was the crime itself that pursued you with remorse." "The results, sir, have helped me to see the crime in its proper light." "My lord, I have the deepest respect for your genius; but at the same time it appears to me that you lack something." "Indeed? It would be a kindness to point out in what respect " "Let me call it a gift.
"If Monsieur the Englishman does not strike within two minutes, down he goes to the bottom." "The idiot, to expose his stern!" "On the whole, it is just as well that La Merveille is so far behind. We shall have all the glory to ourselves eh, my children?" On board the frigate Captain Barker said four words only: "Take the wheel, Jemmy." Captain Runacles stepped to it and the steersman gave place.
Upon his third rejection, Jeremy Runacles was driven by indignation to offer his hand at once to Mistress Isabel Seaman, sister of that same Robert Seaman who, as Mayor of Harwich, admitted Sir Anthony Deane to the freedom of the Corporation, and had the honour to receive, in exchange, twelve fire-buckets for the new town-hall.
"Captain Runacles, I have neither forgotten it nor am likely to. The remembrance of that affair has followed me night and day. I cannot even now that I am pardoned rid myself of its horror. I cannot eat; I cannot sleep. I see my crime in its true light, and am appalled by its enormity. And yet God help me! I thought at the time I was saving my country.
"You have a little girl already." "Precisely. That's where the difference comes in. This one, you'll note, is a boy." "A child of your own!" "But not of Meg's." Captain Runacles turned in his chair as he said this, and, reaching a hand back to the table, drained the last bottle of burgundy into his glass. His face was white as a sheet and his jaw set like iron.
In truth the hunchback, though this was his first acquaintance with a galley, knew well enough that she would strike for the frigate's stern as the weakest point. This was precisely what he wished her to do. Captain Runacles stood with his hand on the wheel and waited, glancing back over his shoulder.
My dear Runacles, you tossed the dice out of the window and flounced off in a huff. As they had been borrowed, and without their owner's consent, I thought fit to step across the street and pick them up. They were lying not a yard apart in the gutter. You were wrong, captain, in not giving them a look." "Why?" "Simply because, as they lay, two sixes were uppermost."
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