Read "The Frozen Pirate" by W. Clark Russell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
However, if I expected my Frenchman to sit very long silent, he soon undeceived me by beginning to complain in his tremulous aged voice of his weakness and aching limbs.
"Tis the terrible cold that has affected me," said he, whilst his head nodded nervously. "I feel the rheumatism in every bone. There is no weakness like the rheumatic, I have heard, and 'tis true, 'tis true. It may lay me along -- yes, by the Virgin, 'tis rheumatism -- what else? " Here he was interrupted by a long fit of coughing, and when it was ended he turned to address me again, but looked at the bulkhead on my right, as if his vision could not fix me. "But my capers are not over! " he cried, setting up his rickety shrill throat; "no, no! Vive l'amour! vive la joie! The sun is coming -- the sun is the fountain of life -- ay, mon brave, there are some shakes in these stout legs yet! " He shook his head with a fine air of cunning and knowingness, grinning very oddly; and then, falling grave with a startling suddenness, he began to dribble out a piratical love-story he had once before favoured me with, describing the charms of the woman with a horrid leer, his head nodding with the nervous affection of age all the time, whilst he looked blindly in my direction -- a hideous and yet pitiful object!