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66 thrice to oop, (i.e. unite); he'll be a lucky lad an he win through wi't."

Our hero was about to speak to the prophetess, when a voice, hoarse as the waves with which it mingled, halloo'd twice, and with increasing impatience—"Meg, Meg Merrilies!—Gypsey—hag—tousand deyvils!"

"I am coming, I am coming, captain," answered Meg, and in a moment or two the impatient Commander whom she addressed made his appearance from the broken part of the ruins.

He was apparently a seafaring man, rather under the middle size, and with a countenance bronzed by a thousand conflicts with the north-east wind. His frame was prodigiously muscular, strong, and thick-set; so that it seemed as if a man of much greater height would have been an inadequate match in any close personal conflict. He was hard-favoured, and, which was worse, his face bore nothing of the insouciance, the careless frolicsome jollity