The Maid of SkerBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
The Maid of Sker
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Foundlings -- Fiction; Romance fiction; Wales -- Fiction
There I smelled a new tobacco, directly I was in the room; and somebody
(pleased with my perception) gave me several pipes of it, with a
thimbleful--as I became more and more agreeable--of a sort of
rum-and-water. And, confining myself, as my principle is, to what the
public treat me to, it is not quite out of the question that I may have
been too generous. And truly full I was of grief, upon the following
morning, that somebody had made me promise, in a bubbling moment, to be
there again, and bring my fiddle, on the Tuesday night.
Now, since the death of my dear wife, who never put up with my fiddle
(except when I was courting her), it had seemed to my feelings to be
almost a levity to go fiddling. Also I knew what everybody would begin
to say of me; but the landlord, foreseeing a large attendance after the
Coroner's inquest, would not for a moment hear of any breach of my
fiddle pledge.
Half of Newton, and perhaps all Nottage, went to Sker the following day
to see the Coroner, and to give him the benefit of their opinions. And
another piece of luck there was to tempt them in that direction. For the
ship which had been wrecked and had disappeared for a certain time, in a
most atrocious manner, was rolled about so by the tide and a shift of
the wind on Monday, that a precious large piece of her stern was in
sight from the shore on Tuesday morning. It lay not more than a cable's
length from low-water mark, and was heaved up so that we could see as
far as the starboard mizzen-chains. Part of the taffrail was carried
away, and the carving gone entirely, but the transom and transom-knees
stood firm; and of the ship's name done in gold I could make out in
large letters TA LUCIA; and underneath, in a curve, and in smaller
letters, ADOR.
Of course no one except myself could make head or tail of this; but
after thinking a little while, I was pretty sure of the meaning of
it--namely, that the craft was Portuguese, called the Santa Lucia, and
trading from San Salvador, the capital of Brazils. And in this opinion I
was confirmed by observing through my spy-glass, copper bolt-heads of a
pattern such as I had seen at Lisbon, but never in any British ship.
However, I resolved, for the present, to keep my opinion to myself,
unless it were demanded upon good authority. For it made me feel
confused in mind, and perhaps a little uneasy, when, being struck by
some resemblance, I pulled from the lining of my hat a leaf of a book,
upon which I copied all that could be made out of the letters, each side
of the tiller of my new boat; and now I found them to be these,--UC from
the starboard side, just where they would have stood in Lucia--and DOR
from the further end of the line, just as in San Salvador.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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