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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That night the wind increased to a strong gale, with a heavy sea, but on the following day the weather moderated, permitting us to keep our Christmas cheerfully. Extra grog was served out, and the mess cooks were to be heard whistling as they seeded the raisins for duff, not, as a landsman might suppose, from the prospect of good cheer, but in order to prove to their messmates that the raisins were not going into their mouths.

I was still making the acquaintance of my shipmates at this time. The men of the Bounty had been attracted by the prospect of a voyage to the South Sea, or selected for their stations by the master or Bligh himself. Our fourteen able-bodied seamen were true salts, not the scum of the taverns and jails impressed to man so many of His Majesty’s ships; the officers were nearly all men of experience and tried character, and even our botanist, Mr. Nelson, had been recommended by Sir Joseph Banks because of his former voyage to Tahiti under Captain Cook. Mr. Bligh might have had a hundred midshipmen had he obliged all those who applied for a place in the Bounty’s berth; as it was, there were six of us, though the ship’s establishment provided for only two. Stewart and Young were seamen and pleasant fellows enough; Hallet was a sickly-looking boy of fifteen with a shifty eye and a weak, peevish mouth; Tinkler, Mr. Fryer’s brother-in-law, was a year younger, though he had been to sea before—a monkey of a lad, whose continual scrapes kept him at the masthead half the time. Hayward, the handsome, sulky boy I had met when I first set foot in the berth, was only sixteen, but big and strong for his age. He was something of a bully and aspired to be cock of the berth, since he had been two years at sea aboard a seventy-four.