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

645 страница из 953

We passed the next two or three hours tolerably well; what between taking our turns at the oars and wringing out our cloathes from time to time, we broke the back of the afternoon, each man secretly watching all the while for any change that would give us reason to hope that better weather was in store; but the only change was that the dull light became duller yet, as the day wore on toward evening. And still there was no wind.

The silence made us uneasy. Our ears had been accustomed to the deep roar of the wind and the seething hiss of breaking seas. God knows, we wanted no more of such weather, but we did crave wind enough to carry us on our way. The great swells went under us noiselessly; the only sounds to be heard were the small human sounds within the boat—a spoken word, a cough, a weary sigh as someone shifted his position.

It must have been toward four o’clock in the afternoon that there was mingled with the vast quiet what was, at first, the very ghost of sound—and yet every man of us heard it. Elphinstone, who was lying in the bottom of the boat just before me, raised his head to look round. “What is that?” he said.