Such great acts, great feelings, great perils, and the gushes that
crowned all of holy triumph when the boats came in with the dripping
and saved, and man for a moment looked greater than the sea and the
wind and death, this seaman poured hot from his own manly heart into
quick and womanly bosoms, that heaved visibly, and glowed with
admiring sympathy, and fluttered with gentle fear.
And after a while, though not at first, David's yarns began to contain
a double interest to one of the party--Miss Fountain. Those who live
to please get to read character at sight, and David, though in these
more noble histories he scarcely named himself, was laying a
full-length picture of his own mind bare to these keen feminine eyes.
As for old Fountain, he was charmed, and saw nothing more than David
showed him outright. But the women sat flashing secret intelligence
backward and forward from eye to eye after the manner of their sex.
"Do you see?" said one lady's eyes.
"Yes," replied the other. "He was concerned in this feat, though he
does not say so."
"Oh, you agree with me? Then we are right," replied the first pair of
speakers.
"There again: look; this sailor, whom he describes as a fellow that
happened to be ashore at that foreign port with nothing better to do,
and who went out with the English smugglers to save the brig when the
natives durst not launch a boat?"
"Himself! not a doubt of it."
And so the blue and hazel lightning went dancing to and fro; ay, even
when the tale took a sorrowful turn, and dimmed these bright orbs of
intelligence, the lightning struggled through the dew, and David was
read and discussed by gleams, and glances, and flashes, without a word
spoken.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67