Читать книгу Mutiny on the Bounty. Historical Novel онлайн

81 страница из 113

“Aha!” exclaimed the surgeon. “Nothing like rum, my lad! Just a sip, now. That’s it! Now a swallow. Begad! Nothing like rum. I’ll soon have you right as a trivet! And that reminds me—I’ll have just a drop myself. A corpse reviver, eh?”

Coughing as the fiery liquor ran down his throat, Tinkler smiled in spite of himself. Two hours later he was on deck, none the worse for his night aloft.

On the twenty-third of May we dropped anchor in False Bay, near Cape Town. Table Bay is reckoned unsafe riding at this time of year, on account of the strong northwest winds. The ship required to be caulked in every part, for she had become so leaky that we had been obliged to pump every hour during our passage from Cape Horn. Our sails and rigging were in sad need of repair, and the timekeeper was taken ashore to ascertain its rate. On the twenty-ninth of June we sailed out of the bay, saluting the Dutch fort with thirteen guns as we passed.

I have few recollections of the long, cold, and dismal passage from the Cape of Good Hope to Van Diemen’s Land. Day after day we scudded before strong westerly to southwesterly winds, carrying only the foresail and close-reefed maintopsail. The seas, which run for thousands of miles in these latitudes, unobstructed by land, were like mountain ridges; twice, when the wind increased to a gale, Bligh almost drove his ship under before we could get the sails clewed up and the Bounty hove-to. I observed that as long as the wind held southwest or west-southwest great numbers of birds accompanied us,—pintados, albatross, and blue petrels,—but that when the wind chopped around to the north, even for an hour or two, the birds left us at once. And when they reappeared their presence was always the forerunner of a southerly wind.