Читать книгу Mutiny on the Bounty. Historical Novel онлайн

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I was in the master’s watch, and toward midnight Mr. Fryer chanced to notice me stifling a yawn, for it was many hours since I had slept.

“Take a caulk, Mr. Byam,” he said kindly. “Take a caulk! All’s quiet to-night. I’ll see that you are waked if we need you.”

I chose a place in the shadow of the bitts, just abaft of the main hatch, and lay down on deck, but, though I yawned with heavy eyes, it was long before sleep came to me. When I awoke, the grey light of dawn was in the East.

We had drifted some distance to the west during the night, and now the ship lay off the valley of Vaipoopoo, from which runs the river that empties into the sea at the tip of Point Venus, the most northerly point of Tahiti Nui. It was here that the Dolphin, Captain Wallis, had approached the newly discovered land, and here on this long, low point Captain Cook had set up his observatory to study the transit of the planet which gave the place its name. Far off in the interior of the island, its base framed in the vertical cliffs bordering the valley, rose the tall central mountain called Orohena, a thin sharp pinnacle of volcanic rock which rises to a height of seven thousand feet and is perhaps as difficult of ascent as any peak in the world. Its summit was now touched by the sun, and as the light of day grew stronger, driving the shadows from the valley and illuminating the foothills and the rich smiling coastal land, I fancied that I had never gazed on a scene more pleasing to the eye. The whole aspect of the coast about Matavai Bay was open, sunny, and hospitable.