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

605 страница из 953

I heard them for a long time, as we sank into the troughs between the seas, counting monotonously: “One-an’, two-an’, three-an’, four-an’ ...” At last the gunner called back: “Mr. Bligh!”

“Aye; are you ready?”

“We’ll not be a second off, sir!”

“Then heave the log!”

Peckover coiled the line in his right hand to pay out freely, while the boatswain took his place at the starboard quarter. At a sign from the gunner he cast the log chip into the sea, and as the twelve-fathom mark passed through his fingers he began to count. At the fifteenth second he gripped the line and turned to Mr. Bligh.

“Four and a half, sir,” he reported, beginning to pull in the line.

“Good! From now on, let the mate of the watch heave the log every hour. I shall reckon our longitude each day with the aid of Mr. Peckover’s watch, and we can check the results by dead reckoning.”

Crouched in the stern sheets, shivering and wet to the skin, I caught Nelson’s eye as I turned my back to the spray. His thoughts, perhaps, like my own, were of the change in Bligh. He was above all a man of action, and seemed happy only in situations which demanded the exercise of his truly great qualities of skill, courage and resourcefulness. He was born to lead men in peril or in battle, and now, in the boat, with the sea for enemy and his task the preservation of his men’s lives, he was at his best—cheerful, kindly, and considerate to a degree I should have believed impossible a fortnight before.