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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I should not have supposed that any man guilty of such a crime against his comrades could have maintained an air of perfect innocence upon the discovery of the theft; but so it was, here. Captain Bligh questioned each of us by name, beginning with the master:—

“Mr. Fryer, did you take this pork?”

“No, sir,” Fryer replied, with a sincerity that no one could doubt.

The question was repeated seventeen times, and the seventeen replies all carried conviction.

I remember having heard, or read, that men reduced to starvation in company sometimes lose all sense of moral responsibility, and that cases have been known where men of integrity, under normal conditions, have committed such crimes without any qualms of conscience, stoutly and indignantly denying them, no matter how damning the evidence against them might be. With us there was no evidence as to the possible culprit; most of our company had taken turns at bailing in the bow during the night, which was so black that one could not see one’s next neighbour in the boat.