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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I felt strangely indifferent as to which it might be. Presently I fell into a kind of stupor, a waking dream, in which blurred images passed over the surface of consciousness, stirring it but little more than the ghost of a breeze disturbs the surface of a calm sea.

It must have been at about half-past nine that the Court had been cleared. When I roused myself from my reverie, an immeasurable period of time seemed to have elapsed; and indeed, the sun had passed the meridian. I heard the ship’s bells strike one o’clock. The clouds had vanished, the sky was pale blue, and the sunlight had that golden quality which beautifies whatever it touches, giving a kind of splendour to familiar, common objects. The Duke’s great guns looked magical in that light, and the throng on the quarter-deck, in their varicoloured uniforms, with sudden gleams of light flashing from epaulettes or sword hilts, seemed like figures out of some romantic tale rather than officers of His Majesty’s Navy.

The door of the great cabin reopened at last. The master-at-arms appeared, announcing that audience was admitted; then I heard my name called. The sound of the syllables seemed strange to me; it was as though I had never heard them before.