Читать книгу Men Against the Sea – Book Set. The Greatest Maritime Adventure Novels: The Bounty Trilogy, Lost Island, The Hurricane, Botany Bay, The Far Lands, Tales of the South Seas… онлайн

114 страница из 953

My host, though no more than forty-five, was already many times a grandfather, and as we approached his house, after a walk of little more than half an hour, I heard joyful shouts and saw a dozen sturdy children skipping out to greet him. They halted at sight of me, but soon lost their fear and began to climb up Hitihiti’s legs and examine, inquisitively as monkeys, the strange garments I wore. By the time we came to the door the chief had a small boy on each of his shoulders, and his eldest granddaughter was leading me by the hand.

The house was a fine one—sixty feet long by twenty wide, with a lofty, newly thatched roof, and, instead of gables, semicircular extensions at each end, giving the whole an oval shape. Such houses were built only for chiefs. The ends, supported by pillars of old polished coconut wood, were open, and the sides were walled by vertical lathes of bright yellow bamboo, through which the air filtered freely. The floor was of fresh white coral sand, spread with mats at one end on a thick bed of sweet-smelling grass called aretu. Of furniture there was scarcely any: small wooden pillows on the family bed, like tiny tables with four short legs; two or three of the seats used only by chiefs, carved from a single log of hard red wood; and a stand of weapons hanging on one of the pillars which supported the ridgepole, including my host’s ponderous war club.