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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Ours was, in fact, a great privilege, and I was grateful for the fact that I had recovered strength enough to recognize it. We were coasting the shores of a mighty continent, through waters and among islands all but unknown to white men. Indeed, in so far as I knew, Captain Cook alone had passed this way before us. On our left lay the main, stretching away, we knew not how many hundreds or thousands of leagues, and wrapped in a silence that seemed to have lain there since the beginning of time—a deep, all-pervading stillness like that of mid-ocean on a calm day. Not one of us, I think, but felt the vastness of this presence.

We had in view a low, barren-looking coast that appeared a complete solitude, uninhabited and uninhabitable; and yet we knew, from our experience of the day before, that a few bands of savages, at least, must find sustenance there. We saw more of them before we had sailed many miles.

A number of small islands were in sight to the northeast. Captain Bligh directed our course between them and the main. The strait was no more than a mile wide, and as we were passing through it, a small party of savages like those we had already seen came down to the foreshore on our left hand and stood regarding us.