Читать книгу Pitcairn's Island. Sea Adventure Novel онлайн

7 страница из 96

“Did he land?”

“No. There was a great surf running. They got soundings on the west side, in twenty-five fathoms, something less than a mile from the shore.... The island must be somewhere hereabout. I mean to search until we find it.” He was silent for a moment before he added: “Are the people complaining?”

“Some of them are growing more than restless.”

Christian’s face darkened. “Let them murmur,” he said. “They shall do as I say, nevertheless.”

The squall was now close, concealing the horizon from west to north. The air began to move uneasily; next moment the Bounty lurched and staggered as the first puff struck her. The topsails filled with sounds like the reports of cannon: the sun was blotted out and the wind screamed through the rigging in gusts that were half air, half stinging, horizontal rain.

“Hard a-starboard!” Christian ordered the helmsman quietly. “Ease her!”

Quintal’s great hairy hands turned the spokes rapidly. In the sudden darkness and above the tumult of the wind, the voices of the native women rose faint and thin, like the cries of sea fowl. The ship was righting herself as she began to forge ahead and the force of the wind diminished. In ten minutes the worst was over, and presently the Bounty lay becalmed once more, this time in a deluge of vertical rain. It fell in blinding, suffocating streams, and the sound of it, plashing and murmuring on the sea, was enough to drown a man’s voice. Fresh water spouted from the awnings, and as fast as one cask was filled another was trundled into its place. Men and women alike, stripped to their kilts of tapa, were scrubbing one another’s backs with bits of porous, volcanic stone.