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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On the seventh day I was admitted into the House of the Weak, and saw my daughter for the first time. Vehiatua and I went together, for no man save Taomi, the priest, had set foot within the enclosure till that time. It was dark in the house, and for a moment I could scarcely make out Tehani on her couch of soft mats and tapa, nor the tiny newcomer, waving chubby fists at me.

Our child was three months old when Stewart and Peggy sailed around the island to visit us. They had a small daughter of their own, as I had learned some time before, and the two young mothers found in their children an inexhaustible subject of conversation. Stewart spent a week with us, and one day of the seven stands out in my memory.

It was still dark when I rose that morning, but when I emerged from my plunge into the river the fowls were beginning to flutter down from the trees. As I stood on the bank, breathing deep of the cool morning air, I felt a touch on my shoulder and found my wife beside me.

“They are still asleep,” she said; “you should see Helen and little Peggy, side by side! Look, there is not a cloud in the sky! Let us take a small canoe and paddle to Fenua Ino—the four of us, and the children, and Tuahu.”