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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Of a sudden a great gun broke the silence with a reverberating roar. Against my will I turned my head. A cloud of smoke half hid the vessel, but as it billowed out and drifted slowly away I saw three small black figures suspended in mid-air, twitching as they swayed slowly from side to side.

Captain Montague had given me a letter from Sir Joseph, written at the Admiralty immediately after the decision of the Commissioners was known. He had taken inside places for us on that night’s London coach. As a postscript he had written: “Mr. Erskine expects you at his house. You must not disappoint the old gentleman, Byam. You will want to see no one for several days; I quite understand that. When you have had the time you need alone, will you send me word? I have something of importance to communicate.”

Nothing could have been more characteristic of Sir Joseph than this postscript. With all his bluff, hearty, manly qualities, he combined the delicacy and thoughtfulness of a woman.

The three of us were too shaken in mind for conversation—too sore in spirit, too bewildered at the change in our fortunes. We sat gazing out at the fields of home gradually fading from view as the autumn evening closed in. Opposite me in the coach there was a vacant place, and it remained unoccupied all the way to London, which we reached at daylight the following morning. But for me, all through the night, Tom Ellison sat there. I heard his laughter, his cheery voice. I saw him peering eagerly out of the window, missing nothing, enjoying everything, engaging in conversation the old gentleman who sat next to me. “Yes, sir, we’ve been away from home five long years, lacking one month. If you’ve ever been a sailor you know what this journey means to us.... What’s that, sir? ... No, no; much farther than that. Ever hear of an island called Tahiti? Well, that’s where we’ve been. If you was to dig a hole straight through the earth you’d come out somewhere near it.”