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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The river was unchanged, and though the bank was overgrown with vegetation, I found my way to my seat among the roots of the ancient mapé tree. The noble tree stood firmly rooted and flourishing, and the river ran on with the same faint murmuring sound. But my youth was gone, and all my old friends dead. For a moment anguish gripped me; I would have renounced my career and all I possessed in the world to have been twenty years younger, sporting in the river with Tehani.

I dared not think of her, nor of our child. I had resolved to sail to Tautira on the morrow and dreaded what I might discover there. Presently I rose, crossed the river at a shallow place, and walked toward One Tree Hill. The groves of breadfruit trees which had once provided food for innumerable people were now hacked, yellow, and drooping; in place of scores of neat Indian cottages, only a few filthy hovels were to be seen; and where a thousand people had lived only twenty years before I met scarce a dozen on my walk.