Commodore Junk — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

16 COMMODORE JUNK. clasp-knife, and his brow was also covered with the lines of trouble, He was a good-looking, sun-browned little fellow ; and as he sat there in his big fisher-boots thrust down nearly to the ankle, and a scarlet worsted cap upon his black, crisp curls, his canvas petticoat and blue shirt made him a study of which ~° a modern artist would have been glad ; but in the early days of King George the First gentlemen of the palette and brush did not set up white umbrellas in sheltered coves and turn the inhabitants into models, so Abel Dell had not been transferred to canvas, and went on carving his hardwood needle without looking up at the man he called Bart. There was not much lost, for Bartholomew Wrigley, at the age of thirty—wrecker, smuggler, fisherman, sea-dog, anything by turn—was about as ugly an athletic specimen of humanity as ever stepped. Nature and his ancestors had been very un- kind to him in the way of features, and accidents by flood and fight had marred what required no disfigurement, a fall of a spar having knocked his nose sidewise and broken the bridge, while a chop from a sword in a smuggling affray had given him a, divided upper lip. In addition he always wore the appear- ance of being ashamed of his height, and went about with a slouch that was by no means an attraction to the fisher-girls of the place. «Ay ! If the old man had been alive——” ‘’Stead o’ drowned off Plymouth Hoo,” growled Bart. “Tn the big storm,” continued Abel, ‘‘ Polly would have had to swab them eyes of hern.” “Ay! And if the old man had been alive, that snapper dandy captain, with his boots and sword, would have had to sheer off, Abel, lad.” “Stead o’ coming jerry-sneaking about her when we was at sea, eh, Bart” EComichbooksneo