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 following day was a repetition of the preceding one. In the early morning a search was made in the shallow water along the sandbar for shellfish, and a number of giant cockles were discovered; but the thirst of every man was so great that these could not be eaten and had to be thrown away. The carpenters were employed in preparing the boats for the long voyage ahead of us. The floor boards were cut into uprights which were fastened to the gunwales, and around these canvas was stretched to prevent the sea from breaking into the boats, for they would all be so heavily loaded as to leave very little freeboard.

On the morning of August 31, the repairs to the boats having been completed, Captain Edwards mustered the company. We prisoners were herded together, under guard, a little to one side of the others. Officers, seamen, and prisoners alike, we were as gaunt and woebegone a crowd as had ever been cast ashore from a shipwrecked vessel. Edwards was clad in his shirt, trousers, and pumps, without stockings. Dr. Hamilton was in a like costume except that he had lost his shoes; but he had saved his medicine chest, and he took an opportunity to whisper to me that my Journal and manuscripts had been saved with it. Most of the sailors were naked to the waist, but had managed to come ashore in their trousers, and, with the exception of three or four, wore turbans made of large red or yellow handkerchiefs twisted about their heads, a common article of dress among the men at sea. Of the prisoners, four of us were stark naked, and the others had only rags of pulpy Indian bark cloth about their waists. We were all without hats and our bodies were seared and blistered by the sun. Muspratt in particular suffered terribly from his burns. Our condition spoke eloquently for us, but Edwards would have done nothing had it not been that Dr. Hamilton urged him to allow the naked men to have some remnants of canvas. It was owing to the surgeon that they had some slight covering from the pitiless sun.