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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The suffering from thirst was scarcely to be endured. Nearly all of us had swallowed quantities of salt water before we had been rescued by the boats, which added to our torture. The provision that had been saved was so scanty that each man’s allowance on the first day spent on the key was two musket-balls’ weight of bread and a gill of wine. No water was issued that day. Lieutenant Corner made a fire with some bits of driftwood, placed a copper kettle over it, and, by saving the drops of steam condensed in the cover, got about a wineglass full of water, which was issued to the ship’s company, a teaspoonful per man, until the supply was exhausted. One of the seamen, a man named Connell, went out of his senses from drinking salt water.

We prisoners were far too miserable to converse. We lay by the water’s edge, covered by sand and longing for darkness; and when it came we were only a little less wretched than before. Our raging thirst and our burned and blistered bodies made sleep impossible. The following morning the Pandora’s master was sent in the pinnance to the scene of the wreck to learn whether anything else might be recovered from it. He returned with a part of the topgallant masts which were above water, and with a cat which he had found perched on the crosstrees. This poor animal was saved only to be sacrificed to the needs of shipwrecked seamen. It was cooked and eaten that same day, and a cap was made from its fur to cover the bald head of one of the officers who had lost his wig.