In a lull between, the Hussar officer at length takes the cigar from his lips, and calls back to them—
“You ruffians! You shall rue it! Shout on—till you’re hoarse. There’s a reckoning for you, perhaps sooner than you expect.”
“Yes, ye damned scoun’rels!” adds the young waterman, himself so enraged as almost to foam at the mouth. “Ye’ll have to pay dear for sich a dastartly attemp’ to waylay Jack Wingate’s boat. That will ye.”
“Bah!” jeeringly retorts one of the roughs. “To blazes wi’ you, an’ yer boat!”
“Ay, to the blazes wi’ ye!” echo the others in drunken chorus; and, while their voices are still reverberating along the adjacent cliffs, the fishing skiff drifts round a bend of the river, bearing its owner and his fare out of their sight, as beyond earshot of their profane speech.
Volume One—Chapter Three.
A Charon Corrupted.
The lawn of Llangorren Court, for a time abandoned to the dumb quadrupeds, that had returned to their tranquil pasturing, is again enlivened by the presence of the two young ladies; but so transformed, that they are scarce recognisable as the same late seen upon it. Of course, it is their dresses that have caused the change; Miss Wynn now wearing a pea-jacket of navy blue, with anchor buttons, and a straw hat set coquettishly on her head, its ribbons of azure hue trailing over, and prettily contrasting with the plaits of her chrome-yellow hair, gathered in a grand coil behind. But for the flowing skirt below, she might be mistaken for a young mid, whose cheeks as yet show only the down—one who would “find sweethearts in every port.”