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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I found Stewart pottering about his garden in the dusk. He had made Tipau’s wild glen a place of ordered beauty, with paths leading this way and that, bordered with flowering shrubs, and shaded rockeries where he had planted many kinds of ferns. He made me welcome, straightening his back and shaking the earth from his hands.

“Byam, you stop to sup, of course? And you too, Morrison?”

Ellison passed us at that moment on his way over the hill, for he lived in Pare, a mile to the west. Stewart liked the lad and called out to him: “I say, Tom! Won’t you stop the night? It will be like old times.”

“With all my heart, Mr. Stewart!” he said, grinning. “I’m half afraid to go home, anyhow.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Morrison.

“That wench of mine again. Last night she caught me giving her sister a kiss. I swear there was no harm intended, but do you think she would listen to reason? She knocked her sister down with a tapa mallet, and would have done the same for me if I had not run for it.”

Stewart laughed. “I’ve no doubt you deserved it.”