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

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This being my notion, I stepped out vigorously, with a punch-inspired lift of my feet, as I made for the sand hills, singing a jolly sailor’s song as I marched, but not thinking of the words I sang. No, nothing while I marched and sang aloud could I think of but the snug and fragrant parlor I had quitted and Uncle Joe’s hearty reception and his promises.

When I was got upon the sand hills I wished I had stuck to the road. It was the hills, not the sand, that bothered me. I soared and sank as I went, and presently my legs took a feeling of twist in them, as though they had been corkscrews; but I pushed on stoutly, making a straight course for the sea, where the lightning would give me a frequent sight of the scene of Downs; where I should be able to taste the first of the air that blew and hit its quarter to a point; and where, best of all, the sand hardened into beach.

But oh, my God, now, as I walked along! think! it flung out of the darkness within pistol shot, clear in the wild blue of a flash of lightning. It stood right in front of me. I was walking straight for it; I should have seen it, without the help of lighting, in a few more strides; the sand went away in a billowy glimmer to the wash of the black water, and a kind of light of its own came up out of it, in which the thing would have shown, had I advanced a few paces.