The Green Flag eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 280 pages of information about The Green Flag.

The Green Flag eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 280 pages of information about The Green Flag.

“You’ve made others look death in the face, Sharkey,” said he; “now it has come to be your own turn.  You and these swine here shall go together!” He lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other lights upon the table.  Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked the cabin door upon the outer side.  But before he closed it he took an exultant look backwards, and received one last curse from those unconquerable eyes.  In the single dim circle of light that ivory-white face, with the gleam of moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the last that was ever seen of Sharkey.

There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the moon-light just outside the shadow of the palm trees.  They waited and waited watching that dim light which shone through the stem port.  And then at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the shattering crash of an explosion.  The long, sleek, black barque, the sweep of white sand, and the fringe of nodding feathery palm trees sprang into dazzling light and back into darkness again.  Voices screamed and called upon the bay.

Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of the Caicos.

THE CROXLEY MASTER

I

Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands, in a state of the blackest despondency.  Before him was the open ledger with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre’s prescriptions.  At his elbow lay the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to be filled.  But his spirits were too low for work.  He sat in silence with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.

Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank.  For six days in the week they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was Sunday.  Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and blasted by the greed of man.  There was nothing in the surroundings to cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment which weighed upon the medical assistant.  His trouble was deeper and more personal.  The winter session was approaching.  He should be back again at the University completing the last year which would give him his medical degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay his class fees, nor could he imagine how he could procure it.  Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it might have been as many thousand for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it.  He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre

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The Green Flag from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.