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A Reading Book for Evening Schools, Selected and Ed. by C.k. Paul
A Reading Book for Evening Schools Selected and Ed by Ck Paul Author:Charles Kegan Paul Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: poor butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning some fishermen saw him floating in his sheepskin coat, and got him into their boat, the sole relater of the... more » dismal tale. For three days no one dared to carry the intelligence to the king. At length they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that the White Ship was lost with all on board. The king fell to the ground like a dead man, and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile. A SHIPWRECK. (de Foe.) In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early one morning cried out,' Land!' and we had no sooner run out of the cabin to look out, in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we were, but the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment, her motion being so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner that we expected we should all have perished immediately, and wewere even driven into our close quarters to shelter us from the very foam and spray of the sea. It is not easy for anyone who has not been in the like condition, to describe or conceive the consternation of men in such circumstances. We knew nothing where we were, or upon what land it was we were driven ; whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or not inhabited: and as the rage of the wind was still great, though rather less than at first, we could not so much as hope to have the ship hold many minutes without breaking in pieces, unless the winds, by a kind of miracle, should turn immediately about. In a word, we sat looking one upon another, and expecting death every moment, and every man acting accordingly, as preparing for another world, for there was little or nothing more for us to do in this ; that which was our present comfort, and all the comfort we had, ...« less