D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 148: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XIX. THE DUKE OF BRAGANZA, All the locality came back to the Gascon, so that he ran in the obscurity as in broad day. He reached the fishing hamlet without a stumble. With his fist he struck at the first door and said, briefly, to the woman outcoming: ‘‘A wrecked man may be on the Moor’s Head!” She was one of those sturdy creatures, fearless of no weather, and as able to help man a boat as a man himself. “Help me get out something that will float and throw in an oar or a pair “Shall I get another hand, sir? The cable is heavy for one to scull and for a pair to pull!” “No, we two—to save time!”’ The woman drew an oar out of the cabin, being a pre- cious tool not to be idly lost, spoke sternly to her little ones who had begun to whimper, but who hushed like wolf cubs when the hunter is nigh, and rapidly preceded her caller. She was more familiar with the shore than he. Besides, she alone knew where the spare boat was hidden. Warmth had succeeded a cold spell and fog arose. This lifted a little off the surface, and it had a phospho- rescent scum. The woman soon found the boat, raked off a screen of eel grass and’ helped the Frenchman in. She waded out as if she had sea boots on, pushed the boat till it was fairly in the water, and leaped in at the stern, where she stood up, easily poised, ready to use the single oar “Portugal fashion,’ that is to say, in sculling. “Where to, master?” said she, unconcernedly as a fer- ryman making a regular trip. “To the cresset rock, I said. Somebody may be there!” “The Lord forbid! but there do be some’at making a click-clack !’’ She lustily plied the bar, holding its edge against the GOMmIGcbooks (C(O)