"We shall have some game, and a fine game too," said Renaud Charron to
himself, as he ordered more sail to be made. "Milord gives himself such
mighty airs! We will take him to the cross-run off the Middle Bank,
and offer him a basin through the key-hole. To make sea-sick an
Englishman--for, after all, what other is he?--will be a fine piece of
revenge for fair France."
Widow Shanks had remarked with tender sorrow--more perhaps because she
admired the young man, and was herself a hearty soul, than from any loss
of profit in victualling him--that "he was one of they folk as seems to
go about their business, and do their jobs, and keep their skins as full
as other people, without putting nort inside of them." She knew one
of that kind before, and he was shot by the Coast-guard, and when they
postmartyred him, an eel twenty foot long was found inside him, doubled
up for all the world like a love-knot. Squire Carne was of too high
a family for that; but she would give a week's rent to know what was
inside him.
There was no little justice in these remarks, as is pretty sure to be
the case with all good-natured criticism. The best cook that ever was
roasted cannot get out of a pot more than was put in it; and the weight
of a cask, as a general rule, diminishes if the tap is turned, without
any redress at the bung-hole. Carne ran off his contents too fast,
before he had arranged for fresh receipts; and all who have felt what
comes of that will be able to feel for him in the result.
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