Many a time when, from our place in the class, she had seen
through the window the red-sailed fishing boats battling with the
sudden gusts of wind in the rapid currents of the Sound, she would
look as though she would remind me of the way we had managed the
dinghy in the same dangerous flow. Thus did she begin to trust me,
as mariners trusted my father.
If it had not been that during the lessons, in common with his
pupils, Andrew Drever took a secret pleasure in looking through the
little window across Stromness harbour, and, from his position at
the desk, watching the movements of the shipping, it is probable he
would have erected some curtain there. The window offered a
distraction to us all, for it often took our attention from our
tasks, and caused many interruptions in the course of the day. But,
as I have indicated, Andrew was not a severe taskmaster, and that,
perhaps, was one reason of our affection for him.
This morning his glances were divided between the empty bird cage
at the door and the barque now making ready for sea. His poor
jackdaw with its chattering--a sound once so monotonous and
wearying, now most earnestly wished for--was gone, but the murderer
of his pet, the brutal Baudrons, was now closely stowed away under
the main hatches of the Lydia, and the dominie had his revenge.
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