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

401 страница из 953

July passed, and August, and still we waited.

ssss1

On the morning of September 12, the ten prisoners on board the Hector were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to proceed to H.M.S. Duke. It was a grey, chilly, windless day, so still that we could hear ships’ bells from far and near striking the half-hours and the hours. The Duke was anchored abreast of the Hector and about a quarter of a mile distant. Shortly before eight o’clock we saw a longboat, with a guard of marines in dress uniform, put off from the great ship’s side and approach the Hector, and on the stroke of the hour a solitary gun was fired from the Duke. It was the signal for the court-martial. Our time had come.

I cannot speak of the emotions of my fellow prisoners at that solemn moment, but I know that my own feeling was one of profound relief. We had waited too long and endured too much to be capable of intense emotion—at least, that was the case with me. I felt unutterably weary, in body and mind, and if I desired anything it was peace—the peace of certainty as to my fate, whatever it might be. I remember how impatient I was to arrive on board the Duke. One’s sense of time is largely a matter of mood, and the voyage from the Hector to the gangway of the larger ship, brief as it was, seemed all but interminable.