Suddenly there came a letter saying that the firm had gone into bankruptcy, that the business had been completely wrecked, and that the Sawyer money had been swept away with everything else.
He has lost many illusions concerning women; he has seen more than one friend wrecked in the sea of foolish marriage; he knows the joys of a bachelor's freedom, without having wearied of them; he perceives risks where the youth perceives only ecstasy, and the oldster only a blissful release from solitude.
It lasted for two days and scores of vessels were driven ashore and completely wrecked.
Captain Jim was away, too—that was the winter he was wrecked on the Magdalens.
He told how his vessel had been run down by a steamer; how he had been boarded by Malay pirates; how his ship had caught fire; how he helped a political prisoner escape from a South African republic; how he had been wrecked one fall on the Magdalens and stranded there for the winter; how a tiger had broken loose on board ship; how his crew had mutinied and marooned him on a barren island—these and many other tales, tragic or humorous or grotesque, did Captain Jim relate.
" "I am induced to think," said Pencroft, "that this man was not wrecked on Tabor Island, but that in consequence of some crime he was left there.
And this became still more evident when Gideon Spilett, after having walked around the hut, saw on a plank, probably one of those which had formed the armor of the wrecked vessel, these letters already half effaced: BR—TAN—A "Britannia," exclaimed Pencroft, whom the reporter had called; "it is a common name for ships, and I could not say if she was English or American!
" "So, Pencroft," asked the engineer, "if a ship has been wrecked on these banks, is it not astonishing that there is now no trace of her remaining?
It might really be said that he expected to be wrecked, and had prepared for it beforehand.
Did these men arrive here voluntarily or involuntarily, by disembarking on the shore or by being wrecked?
Her lively fancy pictured the grief of her friends at her loss; but that did not help or comfort her now, and as her anxious gaze wandered along the shore, she said aloud, in a pensive tone,— "Perhaps I shall be wrecked on Norman's Woe, and somebody will make poetry about me.
" cried Joe, in a panic, as the awful consequences of his deed rose before him, showing both boys mortally injured and several trains wrecked.
Hobbs and Cedric the country might have been wrecked.
Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorizers than the present; we are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom; and about 1829 the dark territories of Pathology were a fine America for a spirited young adventurer.
Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for the virgin mind, against which native merit has urged itself in vain.
That was the occasion, you will remember, when the three children saved the train from being wrecked by waving six little red-flannel-petticoat flags.
Matthew was covered with confusion at finding her there at all; and those bangles completely wrecked his wits at one fell swoop.
A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.
"Later that night, the police found the injured kidnappers in their wrecked car fifty miles from our home.
"Later that night, the police found the injured kidnappers in their wrecked car fifty miles from our home.
