Library / Literature & Fiction

Cap'n Warren's Wards
- Pages
- about 384
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 7 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
“Ostable!” screamed the brakeman, opening the car door and yelling his
loudest, so as to be heard above the rattle of the train and the shriek
of the wind; “Ostable!”
The brakeman’s cap was soaked through, his hair was plastered down on
his forehead, and, in the yellow light from the car lamps, his wet nose
glistened as if varnished. Over his shoulders the shiny ropes of rain
whipped and lashed across the space between the cars. The windows
streamed as each succeeding gust flung its miniature freshet against
them.
The passengers in the car--there were but four of them--did not seem
greatly interested in the brakeman’s announcement. The red-faced person
in the seat nearest the rear slept soundly, as he had done for the
last hour and a half. He had boarded the train at Brockton, and, after
requesting the conductor not to “lemme me git by Bayport, Bill,” at
first favored his fellow travelers with a song and then sank into
slumber.
The two elderly men sitting together on the right-hand side of the car
droned on in their apparently endless Jeremiad concerning the low price
of cranberries, the scarcity of scallops on the flats, the reasons why
the fish weirs were a failure nowadays, and similar cheerful topics. And
in his seat on the left, Mr. Atwood Graves, junior partner in the New
York firm of Sylvester, Kuhn and Graves, lawyers, stirred uneasily on
the lumpy plush cushion, looked at his watch, then at the time-table in
his hand, noted that the train was now seventy-two minutes late, and
for at least the fifteenth time mentally cursed the railway company, the
whole of Cape Cod from Sandwich to Provincetown, and the fates which had
brought him there.
The train slowed down, in a jerky, hiccoughy sort of way, and crept
on till the car in which Mr. Graves was seated was abreast the lighted
windows of a small station, where it stopped.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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