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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As my ship approached the land on that April afternoon, Tahiti wore the green and smiling aspect I remembered so well, and it was hard to believe that an island so fair to the eye could be the scene of war and pestilence. A flood of memories overwhelmed me as Point Venus came in sight, and One Tree Hill, and the pale green of the shoal called Dolphin Bank. Yonder was the islet, Motu Au, opposite Hitihiti’s house; close at hand I saw Stewart’s shady glen, and the mouth of the small valley where Morrison and Millward had resided with Poino. And closer still was the mouth of the river in which I had first met Tehani, so long ago. I was only forty years old,—robust and in the prime of life,—yet as I conned the frigate through the narrow passage I knew so well, I had the feeling which comes to very old men, of having lived too long. Centuries seemed to have elapsed since I had looked last on the scene now before me. I dreaded setting foot on shore.

It was strange as we dropped anchor to see that no canoes put out. A few people were discernible along the beach, watching us apathetically, but they were pitifully few beside the throngs of former days, and where once the thatched roofs of their dwellings had been clustered thick under the trees, there was scarcely a house to be seen. Even the trees themselves had a withered, yellow look, for, as I was to learn, the victorious party had hacked and girdled nearly every breadfruit tree in Matavai.