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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“His people are gentlefolk; they live in Cumberland.”

“Yes, sir; I know.”

Sir Joseph rolled up the chart. I glanced at the tall clock against the wall. “Time I was getting home, sir,” I said.

“Aye, bedtime, lad. But one word before you go. Let me advise you, most earnestly, to consider Captain Montague’s offer. You are sore in spirit, but that will pass. Montague and I are older men. We know this sorry old world better than you. Give up the idea of burying yourself in the South Sea!”

“I’ll think it over, sir,” I said.

Day after day I put off my visit to Withycombe. I dreaded leaving the quiet old house in Fig-Tree Court, and when at last I took leave of Mr. Erskine I had already been to Cumberland and back on Christian’s errand. Of my interview with his mother I shall not speak.

On a chill winter evening, with a fine rain drizzling down, I alighted from the coach in Taunton, and found our carriage awaiting me. Our old coachman was dead, and his son, the companion of many a boyhood scrape, was on the box. The street was ankle-deep in mud, with pools of water glimmering in the faint gleam of the lamps. I stepped into the carriage, and we went swaying down the rutty, dimly lighted street.