Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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I pulled the house-bell and hammered with the knocker. It was dark among the trees; the house stood black, with a dim red square of window, where some crimson curtains shut out the lamplight. Until the door was opened I listened to the weather. All was hushed save the thunder. I could hear the faint, remote beat of the surf upon the shingle, that was all. Not a leaf rustled overhead; but though there was not more lightning, the thunder was more frequent down in the south, as though the clouds over France were blazing bravely.

A middle-aged man, clad somewhat after the manner of the longshoremen of those days—clearly a decayed or retired mariner—pulled open the door, and, as this was done, I heard my uncle call out:

“Is it Bill?”

“It is,” said I, delighted to hear his voice; and I pushed past the sailor who held open the door.

My uncle came out of the parlor into the passage, looked up and down me a moment or two, and extending his hand, greeted me thus:

“Well, I’m junked!”

He then shook my hand at least a minute, and bidding me fling my cap on to a hall chair, he dragged me into the parlor—the snuggest room in world, as I have often thought; full of good paintings of ships and the sea, of valuable curiosities, and fine oak furniture.