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

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It was darker now than ever, for the lamp had gone out.

The memory of the captain's weird story made me shudder. His words, "I was lying in the larboard berth—there, on the cabin floor, I struck the figure down," seemed ever in my ears, and the pale, spectral face he had portrayed, with the moonbeams streaming on its ghastly features and glazing eyes, were ever before me in the dark filling my young heart with a chilling horror.

"Oh to be ashore!" I exclaimed passionately, with clasped hands; "ashore, and free from this floating prison!"

I thought of my gentle and loving mother, and my soul seemed to die within me. The schooner would be missed by daybreak—the alarm would be given; her alarm would rapidly become irrepressible anxiety, which would soon turn to a despair that nothing could alleviate.

Sounds like thunder, or like tremendous blows, at times made me start. These were caused by billets of wood, mallets, or pieces of pig-iron, pitching about in the hold of the schooner, as she rolled, and lurched, and righted herself, to roll and lurch again.