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

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I endeavored to remember all my parents had taught me in their prayers and precepts, and how often I had been reminded by the good old Rector that without the knowledge of Heaven not even a sparrow could fall to the ground; and I thought that surely I must be worth a whole army of sparrows.

From these dreams and ideas—I must have been half awake—I was roused by a violent lurch of the schooner.

On reaching the deck, I found that a gale had again come on, and that the sea was whitened with foam, amid which the sea-birds were blown wildly hither and thither; that the moon was now on the wane, and shed a cold, weird light between the black masses of flying scud, upon the tumbling billows and the empty schooner, which yet floated buoyantly enough. But she now careened fearfully to port. I foresaw that unless the masts were cut away, a capsize was inevitable, for the wild wind howled over the waste of seething water, and the schooner groaned and trembled as wave after wave thundered on her empty and resounding hull.