The courtier saw this hesitation, and the vivid flashes
of intelligence, and would not lose her prey. She drew him with all a
woman's tact, and with a warmth so well feigned that it set him on
real fire. His instinct of politeness would not let him go on all
night giving short answers to inquiring beauty. He turned his eye,
which glowed now like a live coal, toward that enticing voice, and
presently, like a ship that has been hanging over the water ever so
long on the last rollers, with one gallant glide he took the sea, and
towed them all like little cockle-boats in his wake. From sea to sea,
from port to port, from tribe to tribe, from peril to peril, from feat
to feat, David whirled his wonderstruck hearers, and held them panting
by the quadruple magic of a tuneful voice, a changing eye, an ardent
soul, and truth at first-hand.
They sat thrilled and surprised, most of all Miss Fountain. To her,
things great and real had up to that moment been mere vague outlines
seen through a mist. Moreover, her habitual courtesy had hitherto
drawn out pumps; but now, when least expected, all in a moment, as a
spark fires powder, it let off a man.
A sailor is a live book of travels. Check your own vanity (if you
possibly can) and set him talking, you shall find him full of curious
and profitable matter.
The Fountains did not know this, and, even if they had, Dodd would
have taken them by surprise; for, besides being a sailor and a
sea-enthusiast, he was a fellow of great capacity and mental vigor.
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