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

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A great number of boats lay upon the beach, some of them big luggers, and in the dusk they loomed up to twice their real size. Nothing living stirred. This was truly astonishing. About half a mile along the shingle, toward Walmer, lay a boat close to the wash of the water; I could not tell at that distance, and by that light, whether there was a man in her or near her, but I supposed she might be a galley-punt, ready to “go off,” as the local term is and I walked toward her. A minute later I came to a small, black wooden structure, one of several little buildings used by the Deal boatmen for keeping a lookout in. I saw a light shining upon a bit of a glazed window that faced me, and stepping to this window, I peered through and beheld an old man seated on a bench, with an odd sort of three-cornered hat on his head, and dressed in gray worsted stockings and a long frieze coat. An inch of sooty pipe forked out from his mouth, and I guessed that he was awake by seeing smoke issuing from his lips, though his head was hung, his arms folded, his eyes apparently closed. I stepped round to the door, beat upon it, and looked in.