Stanchion

“ Hist, now, between you an’ meself and the stanchion there, this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an’ the Ghost’ll be a hell-ship like she’s always ben since he had hold iv her. ”

“ Why, you are dreaming! The thermometer is up to over sixty degrees, and it’s warm enough almost for the tropics.’
“The hands, of course, thought too that Pat was only joking in his usual way and endeavouring to make fun of Mr Stanchion; and they waited to hear what would come next from the Irishman, knowing that he was not easily shut up when once he had made up his mind for anything. However, they soon could tell from the tone of voice in which Pat spoke again that he wasn’t joking this time, or else he was acting very well in carrying out his joke on the mate ”

“ The wind roared like thunder, and blew with such force that it was with difficulty that even strong men kept their feet, or clung with grim clasp to the iron stanchions. It was found necessary to clear the entire piers from the mass of onlookers, or else the fatalities of the night would have been increased manifold. ”

“ Stanchon turned abruptly and plunged into the great, dim leather-hung apartment. He always felt as if he were entering into some vast cave under the sea, when he crossed the threshold of this room, and the peculiar odour of the leather always caught at his breath and choked him for a moment. Edmund looked sulkier and more futile than usual, even, and the cigarette that dropped from his trimmed and polished hand had a positively insolent angle. ”

“ Jarvyse and I will settle all that, thanks," Stanchon interrupted coldly. "I regret that your sisters should have been annoyed, but as I explained to your mother, inconveniences of this sort would be bound to occur, and the only question was——"
"The only question is," Edmund blustered, "are we to be queered in New York for good by a woman who ought to have been shut up long ago! It's up to me, now, as the man of the house, and I say, no."
He dabbed his cigarette viciously into a wet ring on the silver tray beside him and filled a tiny glass from a decanter; his hand shook. ”

“ I've just left Mary—she's getting a little unmanageable, I hear."
"Yes, yes," the little man panted, "she'll do better out of the family. Yes, yes. They often do, you know. Position's perfectly anomalous here, you know—constant friction."
"I see," said Stanchon. "Let me walk up to the door with you—I've practiced on the steps, once today. You make it ..."
"Oh, clear paranoia," Jarvyse finished the sentence promptly. "They go right along, you know. Perfectly typical. Good days—yes. Of course. Everybody encouraged. Come to a ladies' luncheon—fat in the fire directly. ”

“ He was handsome enough in his new uniform, and more than one envied my Miss Lisbet when she waved him good-bye on the train—they were off for Baltimore.
"Rhoda," says she to me, after a few weeks of waiting, "I can't bear this! Us eating and drinking so easy, and those poor boys dying—it's not right. I must and shall go as nurse!"
And we could do nothing with her—she'd hardly sleep. It was Dr. Stanchon found the way to handle her.
"Dear child," he says at last, "why not do as I do—send a substitute? ”

“ The little lad pulls out a great pocket-knife and lays it on the table.
"I am Dick Stanchon, and I'm ten years old to-day!" says he very quick. "I have this Barlow knife and the 'Arabian Nights,' and I'm to be a doctor, like my father. Do you have frozen pudding often, here?"
Well, you can see how startling it would be to three children to be at the same birthday together! We couldn't be tired talking of it.
"We will all be firm friends for the rest of our life," said Miss Lisbet, very excited, "and never have secrets from each other. ”

“ In the model it was necessary to reconstruct the deck arrangements without enough contemporary description. The outboard appearance and hull form, rig, and arrangement of armament require no reconstruction, for all that is of importance is shown in the lines and rig drawings, or in the inboard profile. The masts are shown to have been stepped over the race on the gun deck. The iron stanchions are shown in the lines drawing and in the construction section. However, their position at the ends of the Battery are apparently incorrectly shown in the original lines plan. ”

“ Stanchon said, trying to speak lightly, his grey eyes firm on her anxious brown ones, "I should say that working for your living did it, Miss Mary!"
And it may be he was right: as a diagnostician he has been widely commended.
THE CHILDREN
It all came over me, as you might say, when I began to tell the new housemaid about the work. Not that I hadn't known before, of course, what a queer sort of life was led in that house; it was hard enough the first months, goodness knows. But then, a body can get used to anything. ”

“ Male and female slowly postured before a fire, scraping flints as they solemnly circled their dead one. Stannum, fascinated at this revelation of primeval music, watched until the tone penetrated his being and haled him to it, as is haled the ship to the whirlpool. It was night. The strong fair sky of the south was sown with dartings of silver and starry dust. He walked under the great wind-bowl with its few balancing clouds and listened to the whirrings of the infinite. A dreamer ever, he knew that he was near the core of existence ”

“ Stanton, I wasn't fit to be out this morning, especially alone, and I didn't come simply from sheer bravado, as you might think, and for the sake of doing what I'd been told not to do. I–I felt as though I must be out in the air, and in motion. I didn't sleep last night, and I didn't eat any breakfast this morning, which may partly account for this silliness of mine, perhaps. I thought I should feel better out of doors, but it seems that nothing in the world can do me any good. Everything I attempt must always end in disaster, and–oh, Mr. Stanton, I am so very, very unhappy and miserable! ”

“ Well, I couldn't say I was sorry for that, just because she was all for schooling and helping the blacks, now they were thrown on themselves like; for old Dr. Stanchon would have it that they were bound to make more trouble now in the South than they had before, and that those who had freed them owed them a living—or something like that. Most hated him for it around our parts, but doctor says the country has found his father was right, to-day. Nevertheless, there's other uses for good family money than that, as we all know.
"You've bewitched the larkspurs, Miss Lisbet," I said, laughing. ”

“ After all, it was not likely Stanesby would have left if there was the slightest danger; he had lived among these blacks, he understood them thoroughly; it was an insult to the man he had known all his life to suppose anything else; and yet the thought of the girl’s loneliness haunted him. The moon set, and by the starlight they saw looming up ahead some rocks, isolated rocks, roughly piled together by some giant hand.
“We’ll camp there,” said Stanesby, “there’s a little water down under the rocks—about enough to keep life in the horses; there’s some grass and a bush or two to make a fire. ”

“ Every Pokanoket know that," replied Squanto, while Janno muttered gloomily in his own tongue,—
"All red men know The-White-Fool's curse. All feel it." So Squanto in his broken yet picturesque phrases told how "many snows ago" a large French ship was wrecked farther down the Cape and nearly everything aboard was lost. Several of her crew, however, came safely ashore and made a sort of camp with some earthwork defenses on the mouth of the Pamet River. [Pg 259]
"Why men, we saw it, and mused upon the marks of European skill and training," exclaimed Standish. ”

“ They do what is to be done, that is all. Each has done and can do the others' tasks."
She felt in some way corrected, yet it was hard to say in what she had offended. But Dr. Stanchon was an odd man in many ways. "All the same," she persisted, "I think I had better have a nurse, now. I shall feel more comfortable. Ask Miss Jessop if she could come out to me. I believe I could get along with her, now. I'm afraid I was childish, before."
But he only shook his head. "The time for Miss Jessop has passed, dear friend," he said quietly. "No nurse ever comes here." ”

“ Oh, Mr. Stanniford, if you knew how I have prayed him and wrestled with him over it, you would never blame me! And he in turn prayed me as no man has ever prayed me before. He had made up his mind, and he would do it in any case, he said; but it rested with me whether his death should be happy and easy or whether it should be most miserable. I read in his eyes that he meant what he said. And at last I yielded to his prayers, and I consented to do his will.
"What was troubling him was this. He had been told by the first doctor in London that his wife's heart would fail at the slightest shock. ”

“ Stanniford. I have acted for the best all along, but my position has been a terribly difficult one. For seven years I have known that your father was dead in that room."
"You knew it, and never told us!"
"Don't be harsh with me, Mr. Stanniford, sir! Make allowance for a man who has had a hard part to play."
"My head is swimming, round. I cannot grasp it!" He staggered up, and helped himself from the brandy bottle. "These letters to my mother and to myself--were they forgeries?" ”

“ She was a nice girl, that nurse—we both liked her real well. Dr. Stanchon—the old doctor, not the boy, here—brought her, and he said to me, 'Now, Mr. Vail, here's the best nurse in New York: trust her.' And we did. She looked sharp at me, Miss Jessop did, and listened over her heart, then she put her cheek down to the lips. ”

“ None was better aware than Stangeist that threats from men of their calibre were likely to result in a grim aftermath—and Stangeist, yesterday, the Tocsin said, had answered them as no other man than Stangeist would either have thought of or have dared to do. One by one, at separate times, covering the other with a revolver, Stangeist had permitted them to read a document that was addressed to the district attorney. It was a confession, complete in every detail, of every crime the four together had committed, implicating Stangeist as fully and unreservedly as it did the other three. ”

“ Why not sit down calmly and talk it over?" pleaded Stanton.
"Ah, you were always a polite man, the kind women like; a man born with kid gloves and no soul. Now we take off the gloves; we show you as you are," and Von Barwig shook his finger at the man opposite him.
There were echoes of laughter out in the hallway; Stanton heard them and trembled. He recognised the voices of Mrs. Cruger's nieces. If these gossips, ever found out the truth, he thought, not a family in New York but would be acquainted with the facts in twenty-four hours. ”

“ After school, Aunt Stanshy was on hand promptly, and she judged by the noises issuing from the barn that all the others were on hand also. She climbed the, stairs and was about stepping into the chamber, when Pip, the assistant sentinel, came forward. He looked very formidable. A scarlet cap was on his head, a white belt tied round his body, and red flannel epaulets decorated his shoulders. He bore a terrible broom, and Aunt Stanshy recalled the fact that it had served as mast for the Neponset. ”

“ Stanton and with him were seven mules loaded with provisions! No angel from the skies could have been more welcome, and, hungry though we were, better than food was the news that father was alive and pushing on to the west. Mr. Stanton had met him near Sutter's Fort, and had given him provisions and a fresh horse. Oh, how relieved mother was! I think she could not have eaten a mouthful, hungry as she was, without the glad tidings. ”

“ Stanton, I don't know. Poor man! he might as well love a shadow as me, and yet he seems so simple, honest, and real himself. He is disappointing me daily, and I have wronged him very much. I thought him a selfish man of the world, but he persists in offering me a chivalric, unselfish devotion, for which he asks nothing in return. Alas! I can give him nothing—nothing compared with what he gives."
"I am going to make my last visit to Mr. Eltinge and the old garden," said Ida to Van Berg as she passed him on the piazza the following morning. ”

“ The next day and the next night were stale and mean and musty with a drizzling [23] winter rain. But the following morning crashed inconsiderately into the world's limp face like a snowball spiked with icicles. Gasping for breath and crunching for foothold the sidewalk people breasted the gritty cold. Puckered with chills and goose-flesh, the fireside people huddled and sneezed around their respective hearths. Shivering like the ague between his cotton-flannel blankets, Stanton's courage fairly raced the mercury in its downward course. ”

“ He gulped the rest of his tumbler.
"The next day I moved my office stuff back, and that damned house was empty.
"'I'm sorry about Mynie, Althea,' I said to the mother, the day afterward. 'If you ever need any money——'
"'Thank you, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh. You couldn't help it. But I guess she'll never need money, seh,' she said quietly. And she was right enough, of course.
"She knew. They're not far from the apes, and they know a lot we've forgotten, I believe. Perhaps forgetting it is what civilised us.
"I never saw Mynie again. She went off East, and George with her. ”

“ With a sniff of amusement Stanton collapsed again into his pillows. For almost an hour then he lay considering solemnly whether a red-headed girl could possibly be pretty. By two o'clock he had finally visualized quite a striking, Juno-esque type of beauty with a figure about the regal height of Cornelia's, and blue eyes perhaps just a trifle hazier and more mischievous. ”