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 was not wholly wretched at this time. A man who knows that he is to die, that his fate is fixed and irrevocable, seems to be endowed, as a recompense, with the faculty of benumbed acquiescence. The thing is there, slowly or swiftly approaching, but for the most part he is mercifully spared the full realization that it must and will come. There are moments, however, when he is not spared. Now and then, particularly at night, I would be gripped by a sense of horror that struck me to the heart. I would feel the rope about my throat, and see the faces of the brawny seamen who were waiting the order to hoist me to the yardarm; and I would hear the last words that would ever strike my ear: “And may God have mercy upon you.” At such times I would pray silently for the courage to meet that moment when it should come.

Of the other condemned men, Ellison best endured the cruel waiting. He had lost his old gaiety of manner, but it was replaced by a quiet courage to face the facts that was beyond praise. Burkitt became more and more like a wild beast at bay. Every time that I was taken to the gun room for exercise I would find him pacing up and down, turning his head from side to side with the same expression of dazed incredulity on his face. He had the mighty chest of a Viking and his limbs would have made those of three ordinary men. He had never known an ache or a pain in his life save those inflicted by some boatswain’s mate with a cat-o’-nine-tails. To men with such a power of life in them, death has no reality until it is at hand. Even now, I could see that Burkitt had not entirely given up hope. There was always the possibility of escape. He was narrowly watched by the guards; the eyes of one or another of them were upon him constantly.