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

286 страница из 953

“Shall I tell you why no men live here?” he began. “It is because of the danger at night. Several times in the past men have tried to sleep here, out of bravado, or because they did not know. All have crossed to Tahiti in the morning silent and dejected, and died soon after, raving mad. Since the very beginning, a woman has come here each night when the sun has set. She is more lovely than any mortal, with a melodious voice, long shining hair, and eyes no man can resist. Her pleasure is to seduce mortal men, knowing that her embraces mean madness and death.”

Stewart winked at me. He plucked two blades of grass, a long and a short, and held them out. “Come,” he said banteringly, with a glance at the girls, “we’ll draw to see who stops the night.”

But Tehani snatched the grass from his hand. “Stop the night if you like,” she said to Stewart, “but Byam goes ashore! I want no demon-woman for him, nor mortal girls who would swim out to impersonate her!”

Stewart sailed for Matavai on the day after our picnic, and four months passed before I saw him again. Yet as I review those months in memory, they seem no longer than so many weeks. It has often been observed—with a justice for which I can vouch—that in the South Sea men lose their sense of the passage of time. In a climate where perpetual summer reigns and there is little to distinguish one week from another, the days slip by imperceptibly.