Laura Brayton — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

146 LAURA BRAYTON. : CHAPTER XXX, IN A STORM AT SEA, Not “a painted ship on a painted sea,” but a gal- lant craft in grand reality, lay rising and falling on the great sobbing waves of ocean, just outside the low capes of Virginia, her head pointing directly into the mouth of the Chesapeake. A gentle breeze filling her canvas, every thread of which was set from the sky-sails down to the courses, had wafted her in out of the Gulf Stream, and now, in the green water of soundings, with the pilot on board, and her passengers actually dressed for the shore, it was annoying that a calm should come on. The first mate—a gallant and handsome young man, who had but this voyage to complete ere the command of a new vessel in the line, a ship called, by permission of the owners, after his true heart’s choice, Sadia, the Peerless, was to be his—was bit- ter in his words of impatience. “Three hours more of wind,” he cried, “ would have run us in where tugs would have faken us up the bay for asong. I wish it would blow the very sticks out of her, instead of leaving us to drift about here like a sick dandy in a ball-room.” “Patience, Mr. Fulton—patience! !” gaid the old captain. “What is a day, or even a week, when your pay runs on?” “Blast the pay! Vd rather lose money than time. I’d give three months of pay now for a double- reefed topsail gale,” comicbooks.com —