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'Get 'em on their feet to the music, says he, 'and you can lead 'em anywheres. 'Tis Gospel truth that, Mister Jacob." "But a man had better mind his steps," said I. "For my part, I shouldn't be surprised if Ruth Bellenden's husband gave us the cold shoulder to-morrow and sent us about our business. However, the sea's free to all men, lads, and the morn will show.
There we were, the four of us, trampling through the brushwood, crushing down the bushes, now lying low, now up a-running and not a man that wouldn't have gone through it twice for Ruth Bellenden's sake. If so be that the night was to cost us our lives, well, crying wouldn't help it and those that were against us were flesh and blood, all said and done, and no spirits to scare a man.
"And the girls kissing him as though he were Apollo," cries Dolly Venn, who, I don't doubt, would have done the kissing willingly himself. But I hushed their talk, and without more ado I went straight down to Ruth Bellenden's house.
A man to marry the best creature that ever put on a pretty bonnet, and to carry her to a god-forsaken shore like this! And to ill-treat her there! Aye, that's it. If ever a woman's eyes spoke to me of hard treatment, it was Ruth Bellenden's this morning. She's some trouble, lads, some dreadful trouble. She doesn't even speak of it to me.
There was not a man aboard, stake my life, who wouldn't have gone to the land willingly for Ruth Bellenden's sake though he'd been told, sure and certain, that Ken's Island must be his grave. And we'd always the ship, mind you, and the knowledge that she would go to 'Frisco to get us help. A fool's hope, I say now.
Now, I've told all this, short and brief, and with no talk of my own about it. The thing had come so sudden, I knew so little of Ruth Bellenden's trouble or of what had befallen her on the island, that I was like a man in the dark groping blindly, yet set on hearing the truth.
Well, you see, I can pick you up as though you were a feather, and now that I have got you into my arms I'm going to carry you why, where do you think? into Ruth Bellenden's house, of course." He said nothing, but lay in my arms like a child. Peter Bligh had fallen headlong by the gate of the bungalow, and Seth Barker was about raving.
From these his mind had been freed, partly by the active exertions of his own excellent understanding, partly by frequent and long visits at Major Bellenden's, where he had an opportunity of meeting with many guests whose conversation taught him, that goodness and worth were not limited to those of any single form of religious observance.
"Listen," said I, beginning to tell them what you know already, "here have we sailed twelve thousand miles at Ruth Bellenden's order, and how does she receive us? Why, with a nod she might give a neighbour going by in the street " "They not being on speaking terms except in church," put in Peter Bligh.
Bothwell," he continued, addressing the sergeant, who just then appeared at the door, "go kiss Lady Margaret Bellenden's hand, who interests herself in your promotion, and you shall have a commission the first vacancy."
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