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

732 страница из 953

It was a beautiful morning, with cloudless sky, and a fresh breeze at E.S.E. This part of the coast of New Holland lies, as our sailors would say, “in the eye of the southeast trades”; and during the time we sailed within the reefs we had constantly a fine, fresh sailing breeze abaft the beam.

Mr. Fryer was at the tiller. Captain Bligh sat beside him with his journal open on his knees, engaged in his usual occupation of charting the coast. He glanced frequently at the compass to obtain bearings on the points, indentations and landmarks ashore; at short intervals, without raising his eyes from his work, he would order “Heave the log,” and make a note of the launch’s speed. Nelson had told me, what I could readily believe, that Captain Cook, in spite of Bligh’s youth at that time, considered him among the most skilled cartographers in England. And I am confident that the officer who will one day be appointed to make a thorough survey of this coast will be amazed at the accuracy of Bligh’s chart, drawn with only his sextant, a compass, and a rude log to aid him, in the stern sheets of a twenty-three-foot boat, sailing fast to the north with scarcely a halt.