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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Hillbrandt broke off.

“Who was that? Was it you, Millward?”

“Yes. We want no more of your praying.”

“No,” someone else put in. “Pray to yourself if you must, Hillbrandt, but give us a rest.”

Of a sudden Hillbrandt broke out in a violent fit of sobbing. “We’re doomed, men,” he said; “doomed, every one of us! We’re to be hanged, think of that! Choked to death at the end of a rope!”

“Damn your blood! Hold your tongue, will you?” I heard Burkitt say. “Choke him off, Sumner, if he says another word!”

Sumner was chained next to Hillbrandt. “That I will!” he replied. “I save the hangman one dirty job if he don’t let up!”

One topic, our possible fate when we reached England, was never mentioned in the roundhouse. With the exception of Hillbrandt and Skinner, present misery was enough for all of us, without anticipating events to come.

The events of that dreary time are only less unpleasant to recall than they were to endure. We had no knowledge of whither we were bound, except that it was in the general direction of home. James Good, our only source of information, told us that Captain Edwards was making a zigzag course to westward, calling at every island raised, in search of the Bounty. We had to form our own conclusions as to where we were from the little I could see through my knot-hole window. Some of the others could also see something of what was taking place outside through the cracks that began to appear in the walls as the planking shrunk under the tropical sun. I kept a record of the days. We left Tahiti on May 9, 1791. On the nineteenth of May we sighted an island which all who could view it recognized at once. It was Aitutaki discovered by Captain Bligh after the departure of the Bounty from Tahiti, and shortly before the mutiny. There was great excitement in the roundhouse that morning. The ship came close inshore and hove-to on the larboard tack while the cutter was being lowered. We saw one of the lieutenants and fifteen men go off in the boat.