Celibate Sarah

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. 1904. Excerpt: ... EPILOGUE Six months after. Rupert Claybrooke to Harry Lyndon. "the Round House, "Stalham, "Norfolk. "my Dear Harry, "Very many thanks for your congratulations upon the success of my book. You always spoke well of it, but I do not think that even you expected it to get into a second edition so quickly. I am sure that I did not. "I promised you when I last wrote to let you have a fuller account of my adventures, and what came of them. But I have been so busy settling down in this new place, and so anxious about my wife and child (you may have seen the notice in the Times), that I have had no opportunity of writing you a letter of such a length as will be necessary to make things at all plain to you. "Thank God we are straight at last, and Bertha and the boy are as well and strong as I could wish. "I had better tell a plain tale plainly, and commence with the evening on which the sou'-wester caught the John and Susan. The first rush of the gale was so terrific that it laid us on our beam ends, although we were steaming with no show of sail. Very soon after we had righted (for the waves rose with extraordinary rapidity) a huge sea took the masts, funnel, and deck hamper clean out of us, and spun them overboard. Within three minutes the stokehole was flooded and the fires extinguished. We were ten or twelve miles from land, and no other boat was near. The sea got higher and higher every minute, and more broken. I thought it was folly to try to get ashore in the jolly-boat, but was laughed at for my pains. However, I remained firm to my decision to stick to the steamer, and the others left me aboard of her, after commenting on my sense in no very flattering terms. Poor fellows! They had not got a couple of hundred yards when a sea curled and broke right over th...