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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There followed a weary time for the fourteen men confined in “Pandora’s Box.” My dictionary proved a blessing to nearly all of us. On our second day at sea it was brought to me by Dr. Hamilton himself, together with writing materials, and the surgeon had had the carpenter make me a small table which rested on the floor across my lap as I sat in my corner. The green island timber of which the roundhouse had been made was beginning to shrink in the hot sun, and sufficient light streamed through the cracks between the planks to enable me to write without straining my eyes greatly. The prohibition against speaking in the Indian tongue was lifted, and the other men entered with pleasure into my studies. Stewart, Morrison, and Ellison were accomplished linguists, only a little less proficient in Tahitian than in English. Ellison surprised me. He spoke the language with a purer accent than any of us, and seemed to have absorbed his knowledge of it without the least effort. He pointed out many fine distinctions between words that had escaped me. This poor lad had never known who his parents were. He had been kicked from larboard to starboard ever since he could remember, and it had never occurred to him that he had a good mind. It saddened me to think that such a youngster, with an excellent capacity for education, had received none, while many a dull-witted son of wealthy parents was offered advantages he was not equipped to profit by.