D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER VI. THE PETREL, After his peregrination, sounding Portugal to its depths with a view of measuring its loyalty for its sister kingdom, D’Artagnan was entitled to his rest. Thanks to the perfect peace of abandoned Salinas, and the savory if primitive cookery of Dame Quaqua, which he varied by handing over to ther spit and pans, sea birds shot with a gun he found and furnished up, the chevalier felt ready for the second act of the drama, the cue for which would be presented by the herald promised by Cardinal Richelieu. Not a soul had entered the hamlet up to a morning when several small fisher boats stood in. They hovered about so long that the lonely hotelkeeper feared that he would never serve his novitiate toward these navigators. Accordingly, having noticed a post of ironbound Cata- lonian pine stuck in a rock, reached at low tide by a reef, which mast was topped by a basket of metal used as a fireholder, he shot off his gun in the air and went out to stuff a truss of eel grass into this cresset. The sailors very properly understood that firing a gun in the air and showing the green signified peace and, probably not dreading one man, steered in and ran their boats upon shore at his feet. They preceded Pedro’s return with quite a little fleet. These forerunners were greeted, not only by the musketeer, but the children, with whom D’Artagnan had made friends by the distribution of sweetmeats of Quaqua’s confection. Petty gewgaws, gathered in his own travels, won over their mothers. Hence, in a few minutes, he was drinking with the fishers in the cave as if he had been innkeeper all his life. After Pedro returned he went out with him. As their catch was rich, the men held him to be a person who carried luck, and he was almost torn to pieces thereafter, as each boat wanted him to sit in the thwarts and utter GOMmIGDOoOks (E(0) im