Fair play : $b a novelSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
Fair play : $b a novel
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
American fiction -- 19th century
With this resolution he went into the captain’s private cabin to look
for a small telescope, which he felt sure was there, and which he wished
to use in surveying the causeway and the shore. He found it and came
out. The little dog jumped down from the doctor’s berth, where he had
nestled himself in his accustomed place to sleep, and began barking and
jumping up and wagging his tail by way of a morning greeting to his new
master.
Justin patted his head, and then went out on deck, followed by his
little four-footed companion.
The ship had struck at right angles with the chain of rocks, so that the
starboard gangway was towards the shore. There Justin stood and,
adjusted his glass to view the far-reaching causeway and the distant
land.
But, even with the aid of his telescope, he could discover little more
than he knew before. He could only more distinctly ascertain that the
causeway was a chain of rocks leading to the shore—a road that would be
covered with water at high tide, and be entirely bare at low tide; and
that the distant land presented only a rock-bound and forbidding aspect.
While he was still gazing, he felt something claw at his boots, mewing
pitifully; and the next instant he heard a shrill barking, and spitting,
and clapper-clawing. And he looked down to see the cat and dog engaged
in a fierce combat, in which the fur flew plenteously.
Justin separated them, lifting the cat up in his arms, and giving the
dog an admonishing kick. Then he took them both down into the storeroom
and fed them apart.
While he was busy in this humane duty, he was greeted by a dismal
sound—a prolonged “Ooom-mow!” that he knew must come from the captain’s
cow. He followed the sound until it led him to her pen, which was
between decks in the stern, a position that had saved her from being
drowned, as the stern was lifted at such a high angle upon the rocks.
Justin had no sooner reached the cowpen, than he was greeted by a
perfect babel of noises from the animals confined in that part of the
ship. The hens clucked, the ducks quacked, the sheep baa’d, and, above
all, the pigs squealed as if they would have squealed themselves to
death, and their hearers to deafness.
All these animals had been saved by their position from drowning, but
they were in great danger of starving.
Justin went back to the storeroom, and found an ax, and broke open
several boxes of grain; and then went to the fresh water butts, and drew
water, and mixed food, and carried it to the pens, and fed the famished
creatures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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