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 delay was torture, but our turn came at last. We drank and drank and drank again until we could hold no more. Nothing mattered now. Having been relieved from the most terrible of all man’s bodily sufferings, we were content. Those whose thirst was quenched crawled into the shade of the trees and fell asleep at once. They lay sprawled like dead men, around the spring. Edwards would gladly have remained here, but the launch and the blue yawl had, somehow, missed the bay and, shut in by land as we were, it was impossible to signal them. Therefore the men were kicked or buffeted awake by the officers, and having filled our small keg, the teakettle, two bottles, and even a pair of water-tight boots belonging to the gunner, we reëmbarked. Several of the seamen were so exhausted that it was impossible to waken them. They were carried aboard and dropped into the bottom of the boats.

When we had emerged from the bay we saw the launch and the blue yawl far ahead of us. We made all haste to come up with them and signaled by musket fire; but the signals were not heard, and it was not until mid-afternoon that we managed to get abreast of them. They had found no water and we were now too far to leeward to permit them to return to the bay where the spring was. Edwards issued three wineglasses of water to each man in the two boats, and we made sail again.