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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“Is there any other passage between those lands save by Endeavour Straits?” Elphinstone asked.

“There may be,” Bligh replied; “but if so, I’ve never heard of it. I need not go into the details of my recollection of the position as given by Captain Cook. You will find this marked on the rough chart I made from memory whilst we were in the cave at Tofoa. It is in my journal. That chart is all you will have to go by in steering through what Captain Cook considered the worst area of reef-infested ocean in the whole of the Pacific. This is the important thing to bear in mind now: Whether we will or no, with strong winds and a heavy sea we must run before them, very likely, farther to the north than we wish to go. Therefore, in case you are driven north of the twelfth parallel, take every opportunity to get to the south’ard, so that you may strike the great reef along the coast of New Holland in the region of thirteen south. It is thereabout, as I recall it, that Captain Cook found the passage which he named ‘Providential Channel.’ If you can strike it, you can coast to the north’ard with a fair wind, in tolerably quiet waters, till you round the northern cape of New Holland and pass through Endeavour Straits. You shall then have open sailing all the way to Timor.”