Читать книгу Mutiny on the Bounty. Historical Novel онлайн

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We sighted Eimeo a little before sunset: the small lofty island which lies to the west of Tahiti, four leagues distant. The sun went down over the spires and pinnacles of Eimeo’s sky line, and was followed into the sea by the thin golden crescent of the new moon. There is little twilight in these latitudes and, almost immediately it seemed to me, the stars came out in a cloudless dome of sky. One great planet, low in the west, sent a shimmering track of light over the sea. I saw the Cross and the Magellanic Clouds in the south, and constellations unknown to dwellers in the Northern Hemisphere, all close and warm and golden against the black sky. A faint burst of song came from the surgeon’s cabin below, where he was carousing with Peckover; every other man on the ship, I believe, was on deck.

All along shore we could see the flare of innumerable torches, where the Indians went about their fishing or traveled from house to house along the beach. The men of the Bounty stood by the bulwarks or on the booms, speaking in low voices and gazing toward the dark loom of the land. A change seemed to come over all of us that night: all unhappiness, all discontent, seemed banished, giving way to a tranquil content and the happiest anticipation of what the morrow would bring. Mr. Bligh himself, walking the deck with Christian, was rarely affable; as they passed me from time to time I overheard snatches of his talk: “Not a bad voyage, eh? ... Only four down with scurvy, and we’ll have them right in a week ashore.... The ship’s sound as a walnut.... Bad anchorage.... We’ll soon shift out of Matavai Bay.... A fine place for refreshments....”