Читать книгу Dick Rodney; or, The Adventures of an Eton Boy онлайн

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"So, Captain Zeervogel," said I, "you are a farmer as well as a mariner?"

"Yes, a schiffer as well as a boor, a plougher alike of the land and sea," he replied, in good English. "I have a farm" (he pronounced it varrm, and so on, using consonants in a mode with which I shall not afflict the reader), "at Wolfersdyck, which is one of the most pleasant of the Zealand isles, and is about six miles long. It was larger once, but when the dykes broke, the sea swallowed up a great portion of it. About three hundred years ago the sea burst over all Beveland, and for many a year nothing of it was visible above the water, but the vanes and tops of the church steeples, with the sea-gulls and petrels perching on them.* So, you see, master, as soon as we come to anchor in the Zuid-vliet, and have our fore and aft canvas in the brails, my horses come from their stables, we run a hawser ahead, and thereby they tow the schooner through a little canal right into my own farm-yard, where my wife, my children, my house-dog—even the pigs, cocks and hens await and welcome us. There we load her, and victual the crew forward and the cabin aft, with the produce of my own land. My brother, who kept the Schiffer Huys on the shore of the Zuid-vliet, used to manage all that for me. But good Adrian is gone now—he died under strange and terrible circumstances, heaven rest him!"