We will talk no more of such things. It is thankless to
be sad when all heaven and earth are keeping holiday under the smile
of God.
'And now let us return. At four o'clock to-morrow morning, you know,
we are to start for Lundy.'
V.--LUNDY.
It was four o'clock on an August morning. Our little party had made
the sleeping streets ring with jests and greetings, as it collected
on the pier. Some dozen young men and women, sons and daughters of
the wealthier coasting captains and owners of fishing-smacks,
chaperoned by our old landlord, whose delicate and gentlemanlike
features and figure were strangely at variance with the history of
his life,--daring smuggler, daring man-of-war sailor, and then most
daring and successful of coastguard-men. After years of fighting and
shipwreck and creeping for kegs of brandy; after having seen, too--
sight not to be forgotten--the Walcheren dykes and the Walcheren
fever, through weary months of pestilence, he had come back with a
little fortune of prize-money to be a village oracle, loving and
beloved, as gentle and courteous as if he had never 'stato al
inferno,' and looked Death in the face.
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