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

491 страница из 953

ssss1

Sir Joseph Banks carried my completed manuscripts back to London with him. Having finished my work, I asked permission to take up my quarters in the gun room again, and returned the same evening. The strain of waiting was less hard to endure in company. I told only Morrison of Tinkler’s return; it would have been cruel to have informed the others, men deprived of all hope of life.

Morrison’s Bible proved a resource to all of us during those last days. It was the same copy he had carried with him on the Bounty, and had been preserved even through the wreck of the Pandora. We read aloud, in turn, to the others, and we continued for hours so as to prevent ourselves from thinking of what was soon to come. Millward and Muspratt had aroused themselves from their stupor of despair. My liking and respect for these men increased greatly at this time. Tom Ellison had never for a moment lost his courage. It was a bitter thought that this lad, who had not an ounce of harm in him, was to lose his life as the result of a boyish indiscretion, at a time when he was most fitted to live. Only Burkitt remained as he had been from the day when sentence was pronounced. Except for brief intervals at mealtime, he paced up and down, hour after hour. Occasionally he would sit down for a moment, his head between his hands, staring dully at the floor; then he would lift his great shaggy head and glance around the room as though he had never seen it before, and a moment later spring to his feet and resume his pacing.