|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 1
Thus it came to pass that Captain Jorgan, sitting balancing himself on
the pier-wall, struck his leg with his open hand, as some men do when
they are pleased--and as he always did when he was pleased--and said,--
"A mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days
of my life!"
Captain Jorgan had not been through the village, but had come down to the
pier by a winding side-road, to have a preliminary look at it from the
level of his own natural element. He had seen many things and places,
and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intellect and a vigorous memory.
He was an American born, was Captain Jorgan,--a New-Englander,--but he
was a citizen of the world, and a combination of most of the best
qualities of most of its best countries.
For Captain Jorgan to sit anywhere in his long-skirted blue coat and blue
trousers, without holding converse with everybody within speaking
distance, was a sheer impossibility. So the captain fell to talking with
the fishermen, and to asking them knowing questions about the fishery,
and the tides, and the currents, and the race of water off that point
yonder, and what you kept in your eye, and got into a line with what else
when you ran into the little harbour; and other nautical profundities.
Among the men who exchanged ideas with the captain was a young fellow,
who exactly hit his fancy,--a young fisherman of two or three and twenty,
in the rough sea-dress of his craft, with a brown face, dark curling
hair, and bright, modest eyes under his Sou'wester hat, and with a frank,
but simple and retiring manner, which the captain found uncommonly
taking. "I'd bet a thousand dollars," said the captain to himself, "that
your father was an honest man!"
"Might you be married now?" asked the captain, when he had had some talk
with this new acquaintance.
"Not yet."
"Going to be?" said the captain.
"I hope so."
The captain's keen glance followed the slightest possible turn of the
dark eye, and the slightest possible tilt of the Sou'wester hat. The
captain then slapped both his legs, and said to himself,--
"Never knew such a good thing in all my life! There's his sweetheart
looking over the wall!"
There was a very pretty girl looking over the wall, from a little
platform of cottage, vine, and fuchsia; and she certainly dig not look as
if the presence of this young fisherman in the landscape made it any the
less sunny and hopeful for her.
Captain Jorgan, having doubled himself up to laugh with that hearty good-
nature which is quite exultant in the innocent happiness of other people,
had undoubted himself, and was going to start a new subject, when there
appeared coming down the lower ladders of stones, a man whom he hailed as
"Tom Pettifer, Ho!" Tom Pettifer, Ho, responded with alacrity, and in
speedy course descended on the pier.
"Afraid of a sun-stroke in England in November, Tom, that you wear your
tropical hat, strongly paid outside and paper-lined inside, here?" said
the captain, eyeing it.
"It's as well to be on the safe side, sir," replied Tom.
"Safe side!" repeated the captain, laughing. "You'd guard against a sun-
stroke, with that old hat, in an Ice Pack. Wa'al! What have you made
out at the Post-office?"
"It _is_ the Post-office, sir."
"What's the Post-office?" said the captain.
"The name, sir. The name keeps the Post-office."
"A coincidence!" said the captain. "A lucky bit! Show me where it is.
Good-bye, shipmates, for the present! I shall come and have another look
at you, afore I leave, this afternoon."
This was addressed to all there, but especially the young fisherman; so
all there acknowledged it, but especially the young fisherman. "_He's_ a
sailor!" said one to another, as they looked after the captain moving
away. That he was; and so outspeaking was the sailor in him, that
although his dress had nothing nautical about it, with the single
exception of its colour, but was a suit of a shore-going shape and form,
too long in the sleeves and too short in the legs, and too
unaccommodating everywhere, terminating earthward in a pair of Wellington
boots, and surmounted by a tall, stiff hat, which no mortal could have
worn at sea in any wind under heaven; nevertheless, a glimpse of his
sagacious, weather-beaten face, or his strong, brown hand, would have
established the captain's calling. Whereas Mr. Pettifer--a man of a
certain plump neatness, with a curly whisker, and elaborately nautical in
a jacket, and shoes, and all things correspondent--looked no more like a
seaman, beside Captain Jorgan, than he looked like a sea-serpent.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|