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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Our oarsmen pulled their best, for every man in the boat felt pretty certain that it was a case of row for our lives.

At the end of half an hour, Mr. Bligh perceived that the master, a man in middle age, was weakening. He made a sign to Peckover to relieve him, and the gunner took the oar without missing a stroke. The sun went down over the empty ocean on our larboard bow, and the brief twilight of the tropics set in. The Indians were still gaining.

Working furiously at their sculls, they were driving their vessel closer and closer to the launch. When twilight gave place to dusk, they were not more than a cable-length astern. The tall savage, whom I took to be their chief, now dropped his club and strung a bow brought forward to him. Fitting an arrow to the string, he let fly at us, and continued his practice for ten minutes or more. Some of the arrows struck the water uncomfortably close to the boat. One fell just ahead of us and floated past the side; it was nearly four feet long, made of a stiff reed, and pointed with four or five truly horrible barbs, designed to break off in the wound.