Читать книгу Mutiny on the Bounty. Historical Novel онлайн

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Our host sighed romantically. “Say no more! Say no more! I can see you, like a Bashaw under the palms, in the midst of a harem the Sultan himself might envy!”

Still sickened by what I had seen, I was doing my best to make a pretense of eating, silent while the older men talked. Bligh was the first to mention the flogging.

“What had the man done?” he asked.

Captain Courtney set down his glass of claret and glanced up absently. “Oh, the fellow who was flogged,” he said. “He was one of Captain Allison’s foretopmen, on the Unconquerable. And a smart hand, they say. He was posted for desertion, and then Allison, who remembered his face, saw him stepping out of a public house in Portsmouth. The man tried to spring away and Allison seized him by the arm. Damme! Good topmen don’t grow on every hedge! Well, this insolent fellow blacked Allison’s eye, just as a file of marines passed. They made him prisoner, and you saw the rest. Odd! We were only the fifth ship; eight dozen did for him. But Allison has a boatswain’s mate who’s an artist, they say—left-handed, so he lays them on crisscross, and strong as an ox.”