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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Thacker was standing under the portico, and the butler and the other servants—a forlorn little group, it seemed to me. Never, save on that night, have I seen tears in Thacker’s eyes.

A few moments later I was seated alone in the high-ceilinged dining room, filled with shadows and memories. The candles on the table burned without a flicker, and in their yellow light our old butler moved noiselessly about, filling my glass and setting before me food that I ate without knowing what it was. It had been my privilege to dine here on Sundays, as a small boy, and on other evenings to come in to say good-night when my father and mother were at dessert—a good-night enriched by a walnut, or a handful of raisins or Spanish figs. Here I had dined with my mother, after my father’s death; here Bligh had dined with us on that night so long ago. Save for him and his letter my mother might be opposite me now.... I rose and went upstairs.

In my father’s study, high up in the north wing, I stretched out in a long chair under the chandelier. His spirit seemed to fill the place: his collection of sextants in the cabinet, the astronomical charts on the wall, the books in their tall shelves—all were eloquent of him. I took down a leather-bound volume of Captain Cook’s Voyages, but found it impossible to read. I was listening for my mother’s light footstep in the passage outside, and her voice at the door: “Roger, may I come in?” At last I took up a candle and made my way along the hallway, passing the door of my mother’s room on the way to my own. Into her room I dared not go that night. I fancied her there, as I had seen her a hundred times in the past, reading in bed, with her thick hair tumbled on the pillow, and a candle on the table at her side.