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

389 страница из 953

It was the irony of my fate that, having been blessed with the steadfast love of two women, I should now—at a time when I most needed them—be separated from my mother by death and from my Indian wife by half the circumference of the globe. Upon these two I had centred all my affections. Now that my mother was gone, I clung to the memory of Tehani more tenderly than ever before.

What might now happen seemed a matter of little consequence. I could not imagine life in England without my mother; the thought that I might lose her had never occurred to me. But when I became calmer, I realized that, for her sake at least, it was necessary to clear our name from the stigma attached to it. I must prove my innocence beyond all question.

Sir Joseph Banks came to see me only a few days after I had received his letter. My own father could not have been kinder. He had seen my mother only a few weeks before her death, and he gave me all of the small details of that visit. He remembered everything she had said, and he allowed me to question him to my heart’s content. I felt immeasurably comforted and strengthened. Sir Joseph was one of those men who seem members of a race apart; who find themselves equally at home among all kinds and conditions of people. In appearance he was a typical John Bull, solidly made, with the clear ruddy complexion our English climate gives. He seemed to radiate energy, and no man could be five minutes in his presence without being the better for it. At this time he was President of the Royal Society, and his name was known and honoured, not only in England, but on the Continent as well. I doubt whether there was a busier man in London, and yet, during those anxious weeks before the court-martial, one would have thought that his only concern was to see to it that all of us were given justice and fair play.