Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

146 Roanoke of Roanoke Hall, The next two years would have been com- paratively happy had it not been for my ceaseless anxiety concerning my uncle Edgar and May. We heard stories of battles and sieges, victory and defeat, and when we were in harbour could see for ourselves the terrible misery that held the unhappy land of France in its iron grip; starvation and abject poverty were daily increasing, the price of provisions had raisen to famine point, and disease stepped in to finish what hunger had com- menced. . We were employed during this period in cruising along the coast, but so completely had the spirit of the navy been shattered by their last disastrous reverse that we seldom ventured far from land, and always avoided an encounter even with a manifestly inferior foe. I was heartily wearied of this monotony and inaction when, at the end of the year sixteen hundred and ninety-four, I being at that time seventeen years of age, Captain Delavigne summoned me to his cabin, and informed me with his usual consideration that he had been ordered to join a fleet about ( © comichbooks.com