D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER X. YHE CUNNING OF A SEA DOG. Some men are so gifted that they easily become friends even with the most uncongenial. One of these was Louis of Artagnan. Hard drinking was a defect of soldiers then, so much so that it was said that all that was gained by the cannon went into the cup. But he remained sober, perhaps be- cause a southern brain is hot enough already. But while sober, this did not, for a wonder, offend ‘boon companions. Fe drew cards and he threw dice seldom, but lost as no amateur has the fortitude to do, which made gamesters cr bare that he was the player for higher stakes than theirs. He paid for a fan of price, a jewel, or a yard of lace, here and there, but never was he cited as a Hector dragged at any Aspasia’s chariot wheel. Come of a loquacious people, his prudence made ‘him taciturn; still, he was so capital a listener that the talkative unbosomed to him sooner than to one of their numerous fraternity. He had not been out twice with the fishers before he became ‘a messmate as indispensable as the paper box. When, at whiles, the wind blew strong and the tiny shell threatened to burst like a roast egg, he had distinguished himself by little deeds of timeliness, recklessness, and steadiness, which are prime qualities on shipboard. Then he was a rough, but prompt surgeon; a physician who could cure with a limited drug cabinet; and this en- deared him in an age when science was mostly in the hands of empirics. Through all this novel experience, one thing puzzled him: he was among Brothers of the Coast, undoubtedly a secret fraternity, comprising all the wanderers who had command of the ocean, from the Cape to the Skager Riack; but it seemed without a leader. But, like the bladder-wrack, the crushing of one bulb did not affect the rest; all were inflated alike; one prominence was not CORNICE OOOKS Ge im