Morley Ashton: A Story of the Sea. Volume 1 (of 3) — Context and Discussion

CHAPTER I. The Blind Goddess

CHAPTER II. Laurel Lodge

CHAPTER III. Cramply Hawkshaw

CHAPTER VI. For the Last Time

CHAPTER VII. The Rejection

CHAPTER VIII. Morley and Hawkshaw

CHAPTER X. Poor Ethel

CHAPTER XI. Darkness made Light

CHAPTER XII. On board the good Ship "_Hermione_," of London

CHAPTER XIII. Acton Chine

CHAPTER XIV. The Rescue

CHAPTER XV. An Old Shipmate

CHAPTER XVI. Under the Tropic of Capricorn

CHAPTER XVII. Second Hearing

CHAPTER XVIII. Rio de Janeiro

CHAPTER XIX. Ethel amid the Atlantic Isles

CHAPTER XX. Moonlight on the Sea

CHAPTER XXI. The Story of a Brave Boy

CHAPTER XXII. Zuares and the Shark

CHAPTER XXIII. Hawkshaw's Old Friends

CHAPTER XXIV. Up Anchor

CHAPTER XXV. The Suspicious Sail

CHAPTER XXVI. The Strange Island

CHAPTER XXVII. The Hermit

It was the evening of one of the last days of spring, when that delightful season is blending with the approaching summer, and when the sun was setting on one of those green and fertile landscapes which we find nowhere but in England, that a young man paused upon the crest of the eminence which overlooks, from the southward, the beautiful little vale and sequestered village of Acton-Rennel, and, with a kindling eye and flushing cheek, surveyed the scene and all its features, on which he had not gazed for what now seemed a long and weary lapse of time.

Morley Ashton--for it was he whom we introduce at once to the reader--was a handsome and active young fellow, with a lithe and well-knit figure, somewhat above the middle height; but he was thin and rather sallow in face, as if wasted by recent sickness or suffering.

His short-shorn hair and well-pointed moustache, together with the general contour of his head, suggested the idea of a soldier, and yet no soldier was he.

Forethought and penetration were perceptible in the form and lines of his brow; his keen, bright, but contemplative eyes, and the shape of his lower jaw, betokened firmness, decision, and courage; and well did Morley Ashton require them all, for these pages, and the course of our story, which opens at no remote date, but only a very short time ago, will show that he had a very desperate game to play.

Tanned by warmer suns than those which shine in his native England, his complexion was dark, and, at times, there was a keen, bold restlessness in his eyes, which seemed to indicate that he had seen many a far and foreign shore, and many a danger too, since last he stood by the old Norman cross on Cherrywood Hill, and looked on the vale and village of Acton-Rennel.

In Morley's dress--a stout grey tweed suit--there was nothing remarkable; but a large and well-worn courier-bag, slung by a broad strap across his right shoulder, seemed to indicate that he was travelling, and dust covered his boots; yet he had only walked some four miles or so from the nearest station on the London and North-Western line.

As he looked upon the landscape, where the cowslips were spotting the meadows; where the wild rose was blooming, and the yellow gorse was flowering by the hedgerows; where the cherry and apple trees were in full blossom by the wayside; the landscape, so rich in its foliage and greenery; so calm in aspect, with the square tower of its Norman church, stunted in form and massed with ivy, darkly defined against the flush of the western sky; the little parsonage, secluded among plum and apple trees, over which its clustered chimneys and quaint old gables peeped; the thatched village, buried amid coppice, wild hops, wild flowers, and ivy; the fertile uplands, where the wavy corn would soon be yellowing under the genial summer sun; and, stretching in the distance far away, the wooded chase, the remains of a great Saxon forest, whence comes the name of our village, Æctune, or Oaktown-Rennel, whose leafy dingles have echoed many a time to the horn of William Rufus, ere he fell by Tyrrel's arrow; the landscape, where the voice of the cuckoo rose at times from the woodlands, with the occasional lowing of the full-fed herd, winding homeward "slowly o'er the lea." As he gazed on all this, we say, a sigh of pleasure escaped from Morley Ashton, for it was long since he had beheld such a scene, or one that had so much of England and of home in all its placid features.