The Rover, Volume 19

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Doubleday, Page, 1923 - Book jackets - 286 pages
A novel of naval life in Napoleonic France. After forty years of piracy on Eastern seas, Citizen Peyrol returns to his native France, a country now ravaged and scarred by revolution and war. Looking for peace in which to end his days, he withdraws to a safe harbor in a remote farmhouse on Escampobar Peninsula, which looks out to the distant Mediterranean, where the lovely Arlette lives with her aunt and the revolutionary Scevola. But the arrival of young Lieutenant Real calls Peyrol once again to action in a mission of danger, patriotism and heroism.

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Page 142 - Esterel, probably with the intention of anchoring for the night off the long white beach which in a regular curve closes the roadstead of Hyeres on that side. Peyrol pictured her to himself, on the clouded night, not so very dark since the full moon was but a day old, lying at anchor within hail of the low shore, with her sails furled and looking profoundly asleep, but with the watch on deck lying by the guns. He gnashed his teeth. It had come to this at last, that the captain of the Amelia could...
Page 1 - And yet it ended a most anxious six months of knocking about at sea with valuable merchandise in a damaged hull, most of the time on short rations, always on the lookout for English cruisers, once or twice on the verge of shipwreck and more than once on the verge of capture. But as to that, old Peyrol had made up his mind from the first to blow up his valuable charge — unemotionally, for such was his character, formed under the sun of the Indian Seas in lawless contests with his kind for a little...
Page 6 - ... right. Near a clump of dark pines with blood-red trunks in the sunset, Peyrol perceived a rutty track branching off in the direction of the sea. At that spot Citizen Peyrol had made up his mind to leave the high road. Every feature of the country with the darkly wooded rises, the barren flat expanse of stones and sombre bushes to his left, appealed to him with a sort of strange familiarity, because they had remained unchanged since the days of his boyhood.
Page 9 - He felt a little funny as it were, and the funniest thing was the thought which crossed his mind that he could indulge his fancy (if he had a mind to it) to buy up all this land to the furthermost field, away over there where the track lost itself sinking into the flats bordering the sea where the small rise at the end of the Giens peninsula had assumed the appearance of a black cloud. "Tell me, my friend...
Page 31 - ... exultation. . . . PRINCE ROMAN (Tales of Hearsay) FRANCE The sky rested lightly on the distant and vaporous outline of the hills ; and the immobility of all things seemed poised in the air like a gay mirage. On this tideless sea several tartanes lay becalmed in the Petite Passe between Porquerolles and Cap Esterel, yet theirs was not the stillness of death but of light slumber, the immobility of a smiling enchantment, of a Mediterranean fair day, breathless sometimes, but never without life....
Page 139 - This grey vapour, drifting high up, close against the disc of the sun, seemed to enlarge the space behind its veil, add to the vastness of a shadowless world no longer hard and brilliant but all softened in the contours of its masses and in the faint line of the horizon, as if ready to dissolve in the immensity of the Infinite.
Page 175 - I don't know whether I didn't like you better when you were quieter." "And you would like best to see me still quieter in my grave." She dazzled him. Vitality streamed out of her eyes, her lips, her whole person, enveloped her like a halo and . . . yes, truly, the faintest possible flush had appeared on her cheeks, played on them faintly rosy like the light of a distant flame on the snow. She raised her arms up in the air and let her hands fall from on high on...
Page 252 - ... tartane had swung clear of the shore, the movement given her by Michel carried her towards the entrance by which the basin communicated with the cove. Peyrol attended to the helm, and in a moment, gliding through the narrow gap, the tartane carrying her way, shot out almost into the middle of the cove. for so long began to glide into the wide world. Michel gazed at the shore as if lost in admiration. Citizen Scevola's head had fallen on his knees while his nerveless hands clasped his legs loosely....
Page 260 - ... see Peyrol again. It was as though the rover of the wide seas had left them to themselves on a sudden impulse of scorn, of magnanimity, of a passion weary of itself. However come by, Real was ready to clasp for ever to his breast that woman touched by the red hand of the Revolution; for she, whose little feet had run ankle-deep through the terrors of death, had brought to him the sense of triumphant lif«.
Page 268 - A feeling of peace sank into him, not unmingled with pride. Everything he had planned had come to pass. He had meant to play that man a trick, and now the trick had been played. Played by him better than by any other old man on whom age had stolen, unnoticed, till the veil of peace was torn down by the touch of a sentiment unexpected like an intruder and cruel like an enemy.

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