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Chapter 7 - ‘I Go To Bristol’
......Jim Hawkins
falls asleep on the stagecoach....
"I must
have dozed a great deal from the very first, and then slept like
a log up hill and down dale through stage after stage; for
when I was awakened at last, it was by a punch in the ribs, and
I opened my eyes to find that we were standing still before a large
building in a city street, and the day had already broken a long
time. "Where are we?" I asked. "Bristol", said Tom. "Get down."
Mr Trelawney had taken up his residence in an inn far down the docks,
to superintend the work upon the
schooner. Thither we now had to walk, and our way, to my
great delight, lay along the quays and beside the great multitude
of ships of all sizes and rigs and nations. In one, sailors were
singing at their work; in another, there were men aloft,
high over my head, hanging to threads that seemed no thicker than
a spider’s. Though I had lived by the shore all my life,
I seemed never to have been near the sea till then. The smell of
tar and salt was something new.
I saw the most wonderful figureheads, that had all been far
over the ocean. I saw, besides, many old sailors with rings in their
ears, and whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails,
and their swaggering, clumsy sea-walk; and if I had seen as many
kings or archbishops, I could not have been more delighted. And
I was going to sea....bound for an unknown island,
to seek for buried treasure."
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