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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After we had paid our last respects to the master’s mate, I was grieved to learn that my friends had been informed by the Sabandar that they were to sail for Europe on the morrow, with the last of the Bounty’s people, aboard the Hollandia, a ship of the Dutch East India Company’s fleet. Grieved for myself, I must add, but glad for the sake of the others, whose longing for England, after an absence of nearly two years, was as great as my own. The deep ulcer on my leg, aggravated by the tropical climate, renders it imprudent to take passage at this time; in Mr. Sparling’s opinion I shall be unable to travel for several months. I am grateful for the friendship of my Dutch colleague and sensible of the deep obligations he has placed me under, yet I am taking up my pen to ward off the sense of loneliness already descending upon me in this far-off place.

The seaman’s hospital is a model of its kind: large, commodious, airy, and judiciously divided into wards, each one a separate dwelling in which the sick are accommodated according to their complaints. I am lodged with the Surgeon-General, in his house at the extremity of one wing; he has had a cot placed for me, on a portion of his piazza shaded by flowering shrubs and vines, where I may pass the hours of the day propped up on pillows—to read or write, if I choose, or to sit in idleness with my bandaged leg extended upon a chair, gazing out on the rich and varied landscape, steaming in the heat of the sun. But now that my shipmates will no longer be able to visit me, the hours will drag sadly. My host is the kindest of men, and the only person here with whom I can converse, but the performance of his duties leaves little time for idle talk. His lady, a young and handsome niece of M. Vander Graaf, the Governor of Cape Town, has been more than kind to me. She is scarcely twenty, and the Malay costumes she wears become her mightily: silk brocade and jewels, and her thick flaxen hair dressed high on her head and pinned with a comb of inlaid tortoise shell. Escorted by her Malay girls, she often comes of an afternoon to sit with me. Her blue eyes express interest and compassion as she glances at me and turns to speak with her servants, in the Malay tongue. I have been so long without the pleasure of female company that it is a satisfaction merely to look at Mme. Sparling; were I able to converse with her, the hours would be short indeed.