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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It must have been well past midnight when we left Teina’s house, but none of the people there or elsewhere thought of sleep that night. Those who had come from distant parts were encamped along the beach and among the groves inland, and the light of their fires illuminated the entire circle of the bay. Canoes were still arriving, most of them small craft containing ten or a dozen men, bringing island produce to be bartered for the trade goods of the vessel. As we walked down the beach we saw one huge canoe, containing fifty or more paddlers, just entering the bay. Her men were singing as they urged her forward, and the blades of the paddles flashed in the firelight as they approached. It was an interesting sight to watch them berth her. With her great curved stern rising high above the water, she looked like some strange sea monster. She was heavily loaded and grounded at some distance from the beach, whereupon all the men leaped out and brought her farther along. There must have been one hundred people in her, to say nothing of the cargo of pigs and fowls. When these had been unloaded, rollers were placed under her keel, and with twenty or thirty men on each side she was quickly run up the long slope of the beach to level ground.