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

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“Patient?” Stewart remarked. “Well, I could put up with three years here—or with four or five! And Byam is a lover of the Indian life.”

“Damn the Indian life,” said Morrison without a smile. “Who knows what wars are going on, what chances for prize money and promotion we are missing!”

I went to sleep with a light heart that night, for our escape seemed a certainty, and the prospect of a year or two among the Indians was far from displeasing. At dawn I saw Peggy’s light double canoe, paddled by half-a-dozen stalwart fellows, set out for Tetiaroa, and all through the forenoon I watched every sign of the weather anxiously. Nature herself now took a hand against us. The day turned chilly and films of cloud began to stream seaward off the mountains. We were in the lee of the high land, and Matavai Bay remained still as a lake, but the wind had chopped around to the south and was blowing up one of the boisterous southerly storms the Indians call maraai. Gazing out to sea, I perceived the line of whitecaps at the end of the lee, and knew that as long as the south wind held, no canoe would even attempt to return from the island north of us.