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 weather continued very severe during the afternoon and throughout the night; Captain Bligh held the tiller for eighteen hours. Though we had not yet begun to suffer greatly for lack of food, the night was a miserable one. At sunset the wind veered a little to the southward and blew so chill that I found it impossible to sleep. Laborious as the task of bailing was, we seized the scoops gladly when our turns came, for the hard work warmed us.

By nine o’clock the wind had blown the sky clear; the moon, sinking toward the west, cast a cold, serene light on the roaring sea. Each time the boat was flung aloft, we gazed out over miles of angry water, tossing, breaking, and ridged with great waves running to the west. Had not every bone in my body ached with the cold, I think I might have felt a kind of exultation at the majesty of the spectacle, and in the thought that our boat, small and frail as she was, could carry us safely over such a sea. And I was aware of what might be termed a cosmic rhythm in the procession of the waves. They passed under us with great regularity, the interval being about the time it took me to count ten, very slowly; they seemed to be about two hundred yards from crest to crest, and I estimated that they passed us at not less than thirty miles an hour. Hour after hour we alternated between fierce wind and spray and the roar of breaking water on the crests, and the calm of the black troughs, where the launch all but lost steerageway.