Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 90: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BONNY JEAN, 68 “God help me!” moaned the girl, feebly, ‘* Godin Beavel, forsake me not !” God answers our prayers always when it is best and wisest for us that our petitions should be granted ; and even now, coming to Lady across the pathless waters, the means of escape from her perilous position were drawing near. T’he schooner Mayblossom, laden with shells from the great shell-banks at the mouth of the Tangipahoa River, had cast anchor far out on the lakes, at no great distance from where poor Lady’s frail bark was tossing up and down, at the mercy of wind and wave. Lifting her tired head at length, the poor girl caughta glimpse of a bright red light, and instantly, hope—which had not been dead in her heart, after all, but only sleeping—sprang up wide awake now, and, springing to a sitting posture, she drew the shawl closer about her, and began to shout wildly. On the deck of the Mayblossom Captain Piper was sitting, his pipe in his mouth, composedly watching the heat lightning which flashed across the eastern sky, where great murky banks of clouds were piled up, and the lightning cut its way like a sword through the darkness, ‘«Think we're going to have astorm, captain?” asked a voice at his side, and a young man, tall and elegant, decidedly out of place on that rough vessel, drew near. ‘Wall, no, I dare say weain’t, Mr. Lester,” replied the captain, taking his pipe from between his lips, relighting it slowly as he spoke, ‘‘though I wouldn’t beat all surprised if we did, arter all. For I must say I never come up the Tangipa- hoa, in all my experience o’ twenty odd years aboard a schooner, but what I got ketched in a thunder-storm. Powerful place for thunder and lightnin’ is the Tangipahoa.” ‘‘Indeed !” returned Harry Lester, with an amused smile, ‘‘then you do not visit the river often ?” Captain Piper took his pipe from between his lips, and Eomichooks (ee)