Читать книгу Mutiny on the Bounty. Historical Novel онлайн

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I shared with Hayward, Stewart, and Young a berth on the lower deck. In this small space the four of us swung our hammocks at night and had our mess, using a chest for a table and other chests for seats. On consideration of a liberal share of our grog, received each Saturday night, Alexander Smith, able-bodied, acted as our hammock man, and for a lesser sum of the same ship’s currency, Thomas Ellison, the youngest of the seamen, filled the office of mess boy. Mr. Christian was caterer to the midshipmen’s mess; like the others, I had paid him five pounds on joining the ship, and he had laid out the money in a supply of potatoes, onions, Dutch cheeses (for making that midshipman’s dish called “crab”), tea, coffee, and sugar, and other small luxuries. These private stores enabled us to live well for several weeks, though a more villainous cook than young Tom Ellison would be impossible to find. As for drink, the ship’s allowance was so liberal that Christian made no special provision for us. For a month or more every man aboard received a gallon of beer each day, and when that was gone, a pint of fiery white mistela wine from Spain—the wine our seamen love and call affectionately “Miss Taylor.” And when the last of the wine was gone we fell back on an ample supply of the sailor’s sheet anchor—grog. We had a wondrous fifer on board—a half-blind Irishman named Michael Byrne. He had managed to conceal his blindness till the Bounty was at sea, when it became apparent, much to Mr. Bligh’s annoyance. But when he struck up “Nancy Dawson” on the first day he piped the men to grog, his blindness was forgotten. He could put more trills and runs into that lively old tune than any man of us had heard before—a cheeriness in keeping with this happiest hour of the seaman’s day.