The Green Hand: Adventures of a Naval LieutenantCupples, George
General
The Green Hand: Adventures of a Naval Lieutenant
Cupples, George
Sea stories; Seafaring life -- Juvenile fiction; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile fiction
"When Captain Wallis stopped, the long send of the sea lifting the brig
below us, with a wild, yearning kind of ripple from her bows back to her
counter, and weltering away astern--one felt it, I may say, somewhat
like an answer to him, for the breeze had begun to freshen: it had got
all of a sudden nearly quite dark, too, as is the case inside the
tropics, without the moon. 'Let's go on deck, gentlemen,' said the
captain, coming to himself; 'now clap on those other topmost stu'nsails,
Mr Aldridge, and make her walk, sir'--'No saying,' I heard him mutter,
as he let us go up before him--'no saying what the want of the
_Podargus_ might do, off the island, these dark nights--with water
alongside, one can't be sure. I warrant me if _that man's_ dreams came
true, as mine did, he would be at the head of his thousands again,
ruining the whole world, with men rotting out of sight in dungeons while
the wind blows! Ay, dreams, young gentleman!' said he to me as we stood
on deck; 'I'll never get rid of that prison, in my head, nor the way
that dead man's brain seemed to come into mine, off the wall! But for my
part, off St Helena, 'tis Napoleon Bonaparte's dreams that enter into my
head. If you'll believe it, sir, I've _heard_ them as it were creeping
and tingling round the black heights of the island at dead of night,
like men in millions ready to break out in war-music, as I used to hear
them go over the bridge near the Temple--or in shrieks and groans; we
all the time forging slowly ahead, and the surf breaking in at the foot
of the rocks. I know then _who's_ asleep at the time up in Longwood!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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