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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At daybreak our limbs were so cramped that some of the men could scarcely move. Mr. Bligh issued a teaspoonful of rum and a quarter of a pint of water, measured in his little horn cup. There was some murmuring when the morsels of damaged bread were served out. Purcell finished his bit at a single bite and a swallow, and sat shivering glumly on the thwart.

“Can’t we have a bit more, sir?” Lamb begged in a low voice, of Fryer. “I’m perishin’ with famine!”

“Aye!” put in Simpson. “I’d as soon be knocked on the head by cannibals as die slow the like o’ this.”

Bligh’s quick ear caught their words. “Who’s that complaining up forward?” he called. “Let them speak to me if they’ve anything to say.”

There was an immediate silence in the bows.

“I wish to hear no more such talk,” Bligh continued. “We’ll share alike in this boat, and no man shall fare better than his mates. Mind you that, all of you!”

A fresh breeze was making up from the east. We set the mainsail and were running at better than five knots when they hove the log. Distant land of great extent was now visible to the south and west, and a small island, round and high, was discovered to the north. The great island we had left, which bore more the appearance of a continent than an island, was still in sight.