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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This place was to be our prison for as long as we remained on the Pandora. It was called “the roundhouse,” but more often we prisoners referred to it as “Pandora’s Box.” It was eleven feet long at the deck and eighteen feet wide at the bulkhead. There were two scuttles, nine inches square, in the bulkhead, and these, with the one in the roof, were heavily barred and gave us what light we had. Across the deck midway between the walls was a line of fourteen heavy ringbolts to which the leg irons were to be attached. We were now made fast in the corners of the compartment, Stewart and Skinner next the bulkhead, and Coleman and I on the after side. Our leg irons were cylindrical bands three inches wide with a twelve-inch length of chain which passed through a ringbolt. One key unlocked all the leg irons and another the handcuffs. The keys were carried by the master-at-arms.

As in our former prison, we could stand up and move half a pace in either direction, and we had full headroom. The floor was the deck itself, and on either side were small scupper holes. In fair weather the roof scuttle was left open save for the iron grating, and two sentries continually paced the roof. The monotonous, everlasting tread of their feet so close overhead became a sound as wearisome to us as the clinking of our chains through the ringbolts.