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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It was all but dark in the room and we could scarcely distinguish the faces of the men who had entered. The master-at-arms carried a paper in his hand. He crossed to one of the ports and held it up to the dim light.

“Thomas Burkitt—John Millward—Thomas Ellison.”

“The prisoners named step forward,” the lieutenant ordered.

The three men moved to the centre of the room. Handcuffs were snapped upon their wrists, and they were placed in the centre of the guard, four men in front and four behind.

“Forward, march!”

They were gone in an instant without a word of farewell being said. Morrison, Muspratt, and I stood where we were, and the door was closed and locked once more. A moment later, as we peered from the ports, we saw one of the Hector’s cutters put off from the gangway, and in the last grey light of the autumn afternoon we could distinguish the three shackled men on a thwart astern. Moored abreast of the Hector and about four hundred yards distant was H.M.S. Brunswick. We saw the cutter pass under her counter and disappear.