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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His quiet confident manner reassured me, and for the time I put aside all thought of what my fate might be. Mr. Hamilton then related, briefly, what I was most eager to hear: the story of what had happened to Bligh and his party after the launch had been cast adrift. They had first called at the island of Tofoa, for water and other refreshment, but the savages, seeing that the party lacked the means of defending themselves, attacked them in such numbers that a massacre of the entire company was barely averted. As it happened, Norton was the only man to be killed. Their subsequent adventures made up a record of appalling hardships, and had any one but Bligh been in command, there is little doubt that the launch would never have been heard of again. On the fourteenth of June, forty-seven days after the mutiny, they reached the Dutch settlement at Coupang Bay, on the island of Timor, a distance of more than twelve hundred leagues from Tofoa. After recuperating for two months among the kindly inhabitants of Coupang, a small schooner was purchased and fitted out for the voyage to Batavia, where they arrived on October 1, 1789. Here three more of the party died: Elphinstone, Lenkletter, the remaining quartermaster, and Thomas Hall, a seaman. Ledward, the acting surgeon, was left behind at Batavia, and the rest of the party embarked in ships of the Dutch East India Company for the voyage home. Robert Lamb, the butcher, died on the passage, leaving but twelve of the nineteen men who had set out from the Bounty’s side.