Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod by James A. Cooper
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page 15 of 344 (04%)
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heave of the Atlantic rollers, the schooner with her yachtlike lines
was truly a picture to please the most exacting mariner. On her deck paced the young captain whose personal affairs had been a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair; his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his eyes were like blue-steel points, but with humorous wrinkles at the outer corners of them, matched by a faint smile that almost always wreathed his lips. Altogether he was a man that a woman would be sure to look at twice. The revelation of the lighter traits of his character counteracted the otherwise sober look of Tunis Latham. His sternness and fitness to command were revealed at first glance; his softer attributes dawned upon one later. As he swayed back and forth across the deck of the flying _Seamew_, rolling easily in sailor gait to the pitching of the schooner, his sharp glance cast alow and then aloft betrayed the keen perception and attentive mind of the master mariner, while his surface appearance merely suggested a young man pridefully enjoying the novelty of pacing the deck of his first command. For this was the maiden trip of the _Seamew_ under this name and commanded by this master. She was not a new vessel, but neither was she old. At least, her decks were not marred, her rails were ungashed with the wear of |
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