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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Those September days were as beautiful as any that I remember. A transparent film of vapour hung high in the air, diffusing the light of the sun, so that the very atmosphere seemed to be composed of a golden dust transforming every object it fell upon. So it was, day after day, without change. The Hector was moored, bow and stern, and the view from my cabin was always the same, but I never tired of it. I had a prospect of the harbour looking toward the Channel and the Isle of Wight, with a great first-rate and three seventy-fours anchored not far distant. I saw boats passing back and forth, their oars dipped in gold, and the men in them seemed transfigured in the pale light. Knowing how brief a time remained to me, I found nothing unworthy of interest and attention. Even the common objects in my small cabin,—the locker, the table, and the inkwell before me,—seen in various lights at different hours of the day, I found beautiful and wondered that I had failed to notice such things before.