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

58 страница из 953

As the private stocks of provisions obtained in Spithead now began to run out, all hands went “from grub galore to the King’s own,” as seamen say. Our bread, which was only beginning to breed maggots, was fairly good, though it needed teeth better than mine to eat the central “reefer’s nut”; but our salt meat was unspeakably bad. Meeting Alexander Smith one morning when he was cook to his mess, I was shown a piece of it fresh from the cask—a dark, stony, unwholesome-looking lump, glistening with salt.

“Have a look, Mr. Byam,” he said. “What it be, I wonder? Not beef or pork, that’s certain! I mind one day on the old Antelope—two years ago, that was—the cooper found three horseshoes in the bottom of a cask!” He shook his pigtail back over his shoulder and shifted a great quid of tobacco to his starboard cheek. “You’ve seen the victualing yards in Portsmouth, sir? Pass that way any night, and you hear the dogs bark and the horses neigh! And I tell you something else you young gentlemen don’t know.” He glanced up and down the deck cautiously and then whispered: “It’s as much as a black man’s life is worth to pass that way by night! They’d pop him into a cask like that!” He snapped his fingers impressively.