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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Meanwhile, I told the others of my conversation with the surgeon. We forgot our wretched situation in the pleasure of being permitted to converse again, and the day passed more rapidly than the previous five had done. Realizing now that we had nothing to hope for until we reached England, we resolved to make the best of things, and to devise methods of passing the time. Of the four of us, Skinner alone had nothing to hope for, and yet he was the most cheerful of us all. I began to suspect, at this time, that the man was not wholly right in his mind. He said more than once that, if the decision were again to be made, he would give himself up to justice as he had done, and he seemed to look forward with pleasure to the day when he would be hung.

We were careful to obey Edwards’s order with respect to the sentinels. We had no desire to make trouble for them, and Parkin was spying about at all hours. But there was a seaman, James Good, whose name was an indication of his kindly nature. He was the man usually sent with our food, and he never failed to whisper to us welcome bits of news as he handed round our plates. “Mr. Parkin’s gone ashore, sir,” he would say; “you won’t be bothered this morning.” Or, “I’ll fetch you a bit of fresh meat for your supper.” Whenever possible he would bring us morsels of fresh pork or breadfruit or sweet potatoes wrapped in a handkerchief inside his blouse. This he did with the connivance of the cooks. Had any of these men been discovered, they would have been severely flogged, and yet they cheerfully ran the risk in order to lighten the misery of our situation.