Literature -- Collections; Mystery fiction; Short stories
"I started, in the name o' God, wi' all my might, an' went, an'
went,--'t was a five mile, wi' goun round,--an' got her, thank
God! 'T was n' the Baccaloue (I sid that long before), 't was t'
other schooner, the Sparrow, repairun damages they'd got day before.
So that kep' 'em there, an' I'd a-been took from one an' brought
to t' other.
"I could n' do a hand's turn tull we got into the Bay agen,--I
was so clear beat out. The Sparrow kep' her men, an' fotch home
about thirty-eight hundred swiles, an' a poor man off th' Ice:
but they, poor fellows, that I went out wi', never comed no more:
an' I never went agen.
"I kep' the skin o' the poor baste, Sir: that's 'e on my cap."
When the planter had fairly finished his tale, it was a little
while before I could teach my eyes to see the things about me in
their places. The slow-going sail, outside, I at first saw as the
schooner that brought away the lost man from the Ice; the green
of the earth would not, at first, show itself through the white
with which the fancy covered it; and at first I could not quite
feel that the ground was fast under my feet. I even mistook one
of my own men (the sight of whom was to warn me that I was wanted
elsewhere) for one of the crew of the schooner Sparrow of a generation
ago.
I got the tale and its scene gathered away, presently, inside my
mind, and shook myself into a present association with surrounding
things, and took my leave. I went away the more gratified that I
had a chance of lifting my cap to a matron, dark-haired and comely
(who, I was sure, at a glance, had once been the maiden of Benjie
Westham's "troth-plight"), and receiving a handsome courtesy in
return.
THE INVISIBLE PRINCESS.
BY FRANCIS O'CONNOR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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