The Cruise of the Shining Light

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Duncan Norman. The Cruise of the Shining Light

I. NICHOLAS TOP

II. AT THE SIGN OF THE ANCHOR AND CHAIN

III. THE CATECHISM AT TWIST TICKLE

IV. ON SINISTER BUSINESS

V. TAP-TAP ON THE PAVEMENT

VI. THE FEET OF CHILDREN

VII. TWIN ISLANDS

VIII. A MAID O’ WHISPER COVE

IX. AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

X. IMPORTED DIRECT

XI. THE GRAY STRANGER

XII. NEED O’ HASTE

XIII. JUDITH ABANDONED

XIV. THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM

XV. A MEASURE OF PRECAUTION

XVI. GREEN PASTURES: AN INTERLUDE

XVII. RUM AND RUIN

XVIII. A LEGACY OF LOVE

XIX. A WORD OF WARNING

XX. NO APOLOGY

XXI. FOOL’S FORTUNE

XXII. GATHERING WINDS

XXIII. THE TIDE-RIP

XXIV. JOHN CATHER’S FATE

XXV. TO SEA

XXVI. THE DEVIL’S TEETH

Отрывок из книги

The Anchor and Chain is a warm, pleasantly noisy place by the water-side at St. John’s, with a not ungrateful reek of rum and tobacco for such outport folk as we; forever filled, too, with big, twinkling, trumpeting men, of our simple kind, which is the sort the sea rears. There for many a mellow hour of the night was I perched upon a chair at my uncle’s side, delighting in the cheer which enclosed me–in the pop of the cork, the inspiriting passage of the black bottle, the boisterous talk and salty tales, the free laughter–but in which I might not yet, being then but seven years old, actively partake.

When in the first of it my uncle called for his dram, he would never fail to catch the bar-maid’s hand, squeeze it under the table, with his left eyelid falling and his displaced jaw solemnly ajar, informing her the while, behind his thumb and forefinger, the rest of that hand being gone, that I was a devil of a teetotaler: by which (as I thought, and, I’ll be bound, he knew well I would think) my years were excused and I was admitted to the company of whiskered skippers upon a footing of equality. ’Tis every man’s privilege, to be sure, to drink rum or not, as he will, without loss of dignity.

.....

“Solid,” says my uncle.

Tom Bull touched my velvet jacket with the tip of his finger.

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