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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We fell silent again, watching Lebogue, who sat at our solitary fishing line, which he had kept in the water nearly all the way from Tofoa. We had no bait to spare, and Lebogue and the boatswain had tried every conceivable kind of lure that our means afforded. He was now using one made of the brass handle of a clasp knife and some bits of red cloth torn from a handkerchief. It trailed after the launch at a distance of forty or fifty yards, and was sometimes drawn closer that we might better observe it. There had been moments of breathless expectation when some fish of splendid size would rush toward it; but they invariably recognized it as belonging to nothing in nature, and sheered away. It was maddening to see fish around us—often great multitudes—and never to be able to catch one. But Cole and Lebogue were ever hopeful. They were continually changing the lure; but the result was always the same. On several occasions schools of small mullet-like fish had hovered alongside of us for a few moments. Had we been possessed of a hoop net we could, unquestionably, have caught some of them, they were in such quantities, but the attempt to seine them up with our few remaining hats had not been successful. For all our bitter disappointments, both the fish and the occasional sea birds we met with proved a boon to us. Attempts to catch them occupied our minds. Our bellies, however, felt differently about the matter, and would never agree that our unavailing attempts did more than add insult to injury.