Paul did
before them."
"St. Paul, Captain Truck!"
"Yes, my dear young lady; to the right about."
Eve frowned, for she disliked some of these nautical images, though it was
impossible not to smile in secret at the queer associations that so often
led the well-meaning master's discursive discourse. His mind was a strange
jumble of an early religious education,--religious as to externals and
professions, at least,--with subsequent loose observation and much worldly
experience, and he drew on his stock of information, according to his own
account of the matter, "as Saunders, the steward, cut the butter from the
firkins, or as it came first."
His prediction concerning the clouds proved to be true, for half an hour
did not pass before they were seen "scampering out of the way of the
nor'-wester," to use the captain's figure, "like sheep giving play to the
dogs." The horizon brightened with a rapidity almost supernatural, and, in
a surprisingly short space of time, the whole of that frowning vault that
had been shadowed by murky and menacing vapour, sporting its gambols in
ominous wildness, was cleared of everything like a cloud, with the
exception of a few white, rich, fleecy piles, that were grouped in the
north, like a battery discharging its artillery on some devoted field.
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