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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When we regained the upper deck, Christian lost his air of preoccupation, and smiled. “Mr. Hayward has been two years at sea,” he remarked; “he knows you for a Johnny Newcomer. But the Bounty is a little ship; such airs would be more fitting aboard a first-rate.”

He spoke in a cultivated voice, with a trace of the Manx accent, and I could barely hear the words above the racket from the forward part of the ship. It was a calm, bright winter morning, and I studied my companion in the clear sunlight. He was a man to glance at more than once.

Fletcher Christian was at that time in his twenty-fourth year,—a fine figure of a seaman in his plain blue, gold-buttoned frock,—handsomely and strongly built, with thick dark brown hair and a complexion naturally dark, and burned by the sun to a shade rarely seen among the white race. His mouth and chin expressed great resolution of character, and his eyes, black, deep-set, and brilliant, had something of hypnotic power in their far-away gaze. He looked more like a Spaniard than an Englishman, though his family had been settled since the fifteenth century on the Isle of Man. Christian was what women call a romantic-looking man; his moods of gaiety alternated with fits of black depression, and he possessed a fiery temper which he controlled by efforts that brought the sweat to his brow. Though only a master’s mate, a step above a midshipman, he was of gentle birth—better born than Bligh and a gentleman in manner and speech.