“No, sirree!” Captain Parks stated. “That’s not the yacht property. It hasn’t any marks on it at all.” The problem was not answered, either by the continued gain in elevation or by the later change of plan. With his flashlight flicking the dots and dashes of the Morse code to Sandy, Dick spelt out a message explaining his idea. Twice he flashed the message, got an O. K. from Sandy, and told Larry. They succeeded in landing unobserved by any of the sentinels posted along the shore, where they had to wait for the boats fetching over the second detachment, there not being boats enough. Before this arrived, they began to climb the rocks by a narrow track, so steep and rugged that they could only ascend by clinging to the bushes and projecting crags. Directly above their heads was a watch-post of a captain and a hundred and fifty men. There, as they drew near the summit, Colonel Howe—a brother of Lord Howe, who fell at Ticonderoga—leading the van, the watch became aware of a noise, and fired down the rocks, directed by the sound. The English soldiers imprudently returned the volley upwards, instead of reserving it until they had gained the ascent. They continued their scramble up, however, with redoubled ardour, and the French, on their sudden appearance, panic-struck, fled. The second detachment soon followed them, and the whole little army stood on the heights above the town before the break of day. The cider tax passed, opposed by thirty-nine Peers and a hundred and twenty Commoners; but it left a very sore feeling in the western counties, that cider, worth only five shillings a hogshead, the poor man's meagre beverage, should have a tax levied on it nearly doubling the price; whilst that at fifty shillings a hogshead, the rich man's luxury, only paid the same. The growers even threatened to let the apples fall and rot under the trees, rather than make them into cider, subject[179] to so partial a tax. No imposition had excited so much indignation since Sir Robert Walpole's Excise Bill, in 1733. In the cider counties bonfires were made in many places, and Bute was burnt emblematically as a jack-boot—Jack Bute—and his supposed royal mistress under that of a petticoat, which two articles, after being carried about on poles, were hurled into the flames. The removal of the soil and grime of the march and battle had a remarkably vivifying effect upon Si. New life seemed to pulse through his veins and brightness return to his eyes. "I order you to take him out and buck-and-gag him," shouted the Provost-Marshal. Ex-Lieut.-Col. Billings strode blithely along, feeling the gladsome exuberance of a man who had "struck a good thing," and turning over in his mind as to where he had best market his batch of lively recruits, how he could get around the facts of their previous enlistment, and how much he ought to realize per head. He felt that he could afford to give the boys a good breakfast, and that that would be fine policy. Accordingly, he led the way to one of the numerous large eating houses, established by enterprising sutlers, to their own great profit and the shrinkage of the pay of the volunteers. He lined the boys up in front of the long shelf which served for a table and ordered the keeper: She flung herself from him, and ran upstairs. That night at supper she took no notice of him, talking garrulously all the time to Mrs. Backfield. "Hir me duval!" said Meridiana to herself, "but they've forgotten the poor person's child." Hitherto he had always considered the opposite of his ambition to be the absence of it. Either one lived to subdue the hostile earth, or one lived with no object at all. It was a new experience to find someone whose life was full of hopes, ideals, and ambitions, all utterly[Pg 217] unconnected with a farm, and it was even more strange than new that he should care to talk about them. Not that he ever found himself being tempted from his own—the most vital part of his relations with Alice Jury lay in their warfare. He fought her as he fought Boarzell, though without that sense of a waiting treachery which tinctured his battles with the Moor; their intercourse was full of conflict, of fiery, sacred hostilities. They travelled on different roads, and knew that they could never walk together, yet each wanted to count the other's milestones. Meantime it seemed as if in spite of his absorption in his new family he was not to be entirely cut off from the old. In the summer of '87, just after the Jubilee, he had a letter from Richard, announcing that he and his wife were coming for a week or so to Rye. Reuben had not heard of Richard for some years, and had not seen him since he left Odiam—he had been asked to the wedding, but had refused to go. Now Richard expressed[Pg 390] the hope that he would soon see his father. His was a nature that mellows and softens in prosperity, and though he had not forgotten the miseries of his youth, he was too happy to let them stand between him and Reuben now that they were only memories. HoME一级做暧暧xo细节免费观看
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