Author: Alexander Hunter

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9781230375571

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII A FISHING AND HUNTING TRIP ALONG THE NORTH CAROLINA COAST Cap'n Joe Peyton lived down on Currituck Sound, North Carolina. He owned a big house, a long seine, one hundred acres of land, a thousand or more acres of marsh, a couple of double-barreled guns, a Chesapeake Bay dog, a brier-root pipe, and he had a very fine-looking wife. If there is anything more needed to make a sportsman happy, deponent knoweth it not. But to Cap'n Joe's mind there was a drawback, one element missing from his otherwise complete sum of human happiness: he frequently bemoaned the fact that Providence had not caused an appleorchard to grow near the house, a feat (to use a Hibernian expression) the hand of man could not accomplish, for the soil was one-half swamp-mud and the other half sand. The house was built between the ocean and the sound, and but a pistolshot from either. "Cap'n Peyton," as he was called by his acquaintances, and just plain "Joe" by his intimates, was a man somewhere in the fifties, over six feet tall, with a form which, in spite of its decided embonpoint, indicated great strength and vigor. I have frequently thought, as I looked at his jolly face, "Here is the personification of old Jack Falstaff!" There were the same twinkling, cunning eyes, dancing with merriment; the same bald head, garnished with long hair at the sides; the same bulbous nose, fiery red; the sensual mouth half hidden by a heavy beard; the same rich, resonant voice full of joyous bonhomie; the same careless, soulless, prevaricating Jack as portrayed by Hackett, that glorious Thespian of my boyhood days. Cap'n Peyton was also the owner of a small sloop, named the Sally Lunn, in which he offered to take a party along the North Carolina coast, as far down as they...