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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Tuahu smiled sorrowfully. “I understand,” he said.

At that moment I heard a sound of voices on the path, and he touched my arm. “She is coming, Byam,” he said in a low voice. A tall girl was approaching us, followed by a servant, and leading a tiny child by the hand. Her eyes were dark blue as the sea; her robe of snow-white cloth fell from her shoulders in graceful folds, and on her bosom I saw a necklace of gold, curiously wrought like the sinnet seamen plait.

“Tehani,” called the man beside me, and I caught my breath as she turned, for she had all her dead mother’s beauty, and something of my own mother, as well. “The English captain from Matavai,” Tuahu was saying, and she gave me her hand graciously. My granddaughter was staring up at me in wonder, and I turned away blindly.

“We must go on,” said Tehani to her uncle. “I promised the child she should see the English boat.”

“Aye, go,” replied Tuahu.

The moon was bright overhead when I reëmbarked in the pinnace to return to my ship. A chill night breeze came whispering down from the depths of the valley, and suddenly the place was full of ghosts,—shadows of men alive and dead,—my own among them.