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

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The sea was comparatively smooth, but still the empty schooner rolled and lurched fearfully; the more so, that the fore-and-aft foresail was hanging so loosely in the brails.

A hundred years seemed to have elapsed since I had heard the dear voices and seen the loved faces of those I had left at home—of my father, my mother, of Dot, and of Sybil; while the events of my early schoolboy days seemed to have occurred but yesterday.

All time was chaos and confusion!

In my sorrow and despair, I never thought, unless with anger, of Jan van Zeervogel, the poor Dutch skipper, whose interests were so much involved with the loss or safety of his little schooner, with which the flood-tide had made so free. I thought only of my own danger, and my mother's sorrow for the mystery that would overhang my fate.

Now hunger assailed me, creating a new terror lest I should perish by want of food; and all I had read or heard of wrecks, rafts, and castaways crowded on my memory, to aggravate the real perils which surrounded me.