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

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I was not surprised that Uncle Joe and his family had not heard of the arrival of the Royal Brunswicker in the Downs; though I had been somewhat astonished by his guessing it was I, when I knocked.

“So you’re chief mate of the ship?” he exclaimed.

“I am.”

“How has Spalding used ye, Bill?”

“Handsomely. As a father. I shall love Spalding till the end of my days, and until I get command I shall never wish to go afloat with another man.”

“Well,” said my uncle, “it is not every skipper, as you know, that would allow his first mate a run ashore, himself waiting aboard the while for a slant of wind to get his anchor. No. Don’t let us forget the weather. Bess, my daisy, there’s no call for Bill to keep all on looking out o’ doors; get ye forth now and again and report any sigh of wind you may hear. I’ll find out its quarter, and Bill shall not fail his captain.”

“What’s the news?” said I.

“News enough,” he said; and I sat and listened to news, much of which was extraordinary.

I heard of the Yankees thrashing us by land and sea, of fierce and desperate fighting on the Canadian lakes, of the landing of the Prince of Orange in Holland, and of his being proclaimed King of the United Netherlands, of Murat proving a renegade and suing for peace with this country, of gallant seafights down Toulon way and in the Adriatic and elsewhere, of the investment of Bayonne by the British army, of the entry of the Allies into Paris, of peace between England and France, of Louis XVIII. in the room of Bonaparte, and—which almost took my breath away—of Bonaparte himself at Elba, dethroned, his talons pared, his teeth drawn, but with his head still on his shoulders, and in full possession of his bloody reason.