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

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“Heave ahead, lads,” exclaimed a voice that was not wanting in refinement, though it sounded as if the person who owned it was rather tipsy.

At the moment of seizing me the company of fellows had halted within the sheen of the lamp at the corner of the street. They were a wonderfully fine body of men, magnificent examples of the British sailor of a period when triumphant successes and a long victorious activity had worked the British naval seaman up to the highest pitch of perfection that he ever had attained, a pitch that it must be impossible for him under the utterly changed conditions of the sea life to ever again attain. They were armed with cutlasses, and some of them carried truncheons and wore round hats and round jackets and heavy belts. Two of the mob were pressed men.

“Heave ahead, lads,” cried the refined dram-thickened voice.

I looked in the direction of the voice, and observed a young fellow clad in a pea-coat, with some sort of head-gear on his head that might have been designed to disguise him.