I see
again my uncle's face, white and intent, and hear him discourse, hear
him make consciously Napoleonic decisions, "grip" his nettles, put
his "finger on the spot," "bluff," say "snap." He became particularly
addicted to the last idiom. Towards the end every conceivable act took
the form of saying "snap!"
The odd fish that came to us! And among others came Gordon-Nasmyth, that
queer blend of romance and illegality who was destined to drag me into
the most irrelevant adventure in my life the Mordet Island affair; and
leave me, as they say, with blood upon my hands. It is remarkable how
little it troubles my conscience and how much it stirs my imagination,
that particular memory of the life I took. The story of Mordet Island
has been told in a government report and told all wrong; there are still
excellent reasons for leaving it wrong in places, but the liveliest
appeals of discretion forbid my leaving it out altogether.
I've still the vividest memory of Gordon-Nasmyth's appearance in the
inner sanctum, a lank, sunburnt person in tweeds with a yellow-brown
hatchet face and one faded blue eye--the other was a closed and sunken
lid--and how he told us with a stiff affectation of ease his incredible
story of this great heap of quap that lay abandoned or undiscovered
on the beach behind Mordet's Island among white dead mangroves and the
black ooze of brackish water.
Pages:
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385