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

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Yes; the eye or the hook by which the corpse had hung had been melted, and there lay the body, ghastly in its chains, but how much ghastlier had there been light to yield a full revelation of feature and of such injury as the stroke of flame may have dealt it! There it lay in its mother’s arms! She held its head with the iron collar about its neck to her breast; she rocked it; she talked to it; she blessed God for giving her son to her.

The rain ceased, and over the sea the black dye of tempest thinned, a sure sign of approaching wind, driving the heavy, loose wings of vapor before it. In another minute I felt a draught of air. It was out of the south. Standing on those sand hills, a familiar haunt of mine, indeed, in the olden times, I could as readily hit the quarter of the wind—yea, to the eighth of a point—as though I took its bearings with the compass before me. I might be very sure that this was a breeze to freshen rapidly, and that even now the boatswain of the Royal Brunswicker was thumping with a handspike upon the fore-scuttle, bidding all hands tumble up to man the windlass. Spalding must not be suffered to stare over the side in search of me while he went on giving orders to make sail. It was very late. How late, I knew not. I had heard no clock. Maybe it was one in the morning.