Youth at the Prow - Softcover

Reseña del editor

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898. Excerpt: ... NIALL Chapter I He stood on a headland that overlooked the sea; a middle-aged man in the dress of a Catholic priest, with a grave face, and deep set, shrewd grey eyes. It was July weather, and the wide hills behind him bore patches of blazing gorse and tufts of purple heather here and there on their uneven surface. Below him lay the sea, a dancing sheet of molten silver, whose tiny wavelets broke with dainty grace on the belt of shingle. The scene was very beautiful, perhaps more beautiful because of its desolation. On all the miles of land and water surrounding the motionless figure on the headland not a living thing stirred but an occasional mountain sheep browsing among the heather; unless the black speck that danced on the sea, half a league from land, could be regarded as a living thing. It was on this black speck that Father Donovan's eyes were fixed, as it moved lightly and swiftly as a sea bird towards the shore. A native curragh or coracle--one of the boats made of osier-work and tarred canvas, that for centuries, indeed, since long before the dawn of civilisation, have been in constant use among the native population of some parts of Ireland--it looked to the uninitiated the frailest ark of safety to which human life was ever entrusted. But it was not of its fragility, or its grace, that Father Donovan was thinking, for, in his eyes, there was neither dread nor admiration, only a miserable inarticulate anger. The curragh had two occupants; one a girl, wearing a sailor hat and a well-cut costume of white and navy blue, the other a young man, who wore the cord trousers and striped shirt of the peasantry, but who carried himself like a prince--as peasants sometimes do--and possessed a face of an unusual and very noble order of beauty. Lightly and s...