The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Voyage of the Aurora, by Harry Collingwood

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Title: The Voyage of the Aurora

Author: Harry Collingwood

Release Date: January 27, 2009 [EBook #27906]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOYAGE OF THE AURORA ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Voyage of the Aurora, by Harry Collingwood.

CHAPTER ONE.

INTRODUCES LUCY WALFORD.

Those who have ever had occasion to reside for any length of time in
Gosport are sure to be more or less acquainted with the little village
of Alverstoke; because it lies near at hand, and the road leading
thereto forms one of the most pleasant walks in the neighbourhood.

But it may be that there are those, into whose hands this book will
fall, who have never so much as heard the name of the place. For their
benefit, then, it may be worth while to state that Alverstoke is
pleasantly situated at a distance of about one mile from the
above-mentioned town of Gosport, and within half a mile of the waters of
the Solent.

It is a very unimportant little place at the present day: it was even
more so in the year 17--, the year in which this veracious history
opens. It was unimportant, that is to say, in a _general_ sense; the
public knew very little about it, and cared still less; but in a
_particular_ sense, and to the officers of His Majesty's Customs, it was
a very important place indeed, inasmuch as the inhabitants, animated by
a spirit of enterprise and a love of adventure not to be satisfied by
such very ordinary and humdrum pursuits as those of fishing and
market-gardening, had, almost to a man--to say nothing of the women and
children--added thereto the illegal but lucrative and exciting
occupation of smuggling; to the great loss and damage of the king's
revenues.

The village consisted, at that time, of a single short, narrow street
with a bend in the middle of it. Nearly one half of the north side of
this street was occupied by the churchyard and church; the remaining
portion, as well as the opposite side of the way, being composed of
small low, two-story cottages with thatched roofs (and most of the