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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At noon we were abreast of a high headland only three miles distant, and, having passed it, we found the land still bearing off in a southwesterly direction for as far as the eye could reach. Our dinner was the usual allowance: one twenty-fifth of a pound of bread, and a half pint of water—for Mr. Bligh was not the man to relax his vigilance until assured that the need for vigilance was past; but the bird we had caught the night before was divided in the customary manner. I received a portion of the breast, which, a week earlier, I should have considered a tidbit of the rarest sort; but now my stomach revolted at the sight and tainted smell of the raw flesh, and I could not eat it. I gave my portion to Peckover, and merely to see the relish with which he devoured it upset me the more, so that I fell to retching violently. Six or seven others were in as bad a state. Mr. Bligh gave the weakest of us a swallow of rum, of which we still had three quarters of a bottle.

All through the afternoon the weather was hazy, and we could see no great distance before us, but were close enough in to observe the appearance of the coast, which was low and covered with a seemingly endless forest of fan palms. At this time we saw no signs anywhere of cultivated spots, and, as we proceeded, the land had a more arid look. Captain Bligh said nothing of the matter; but I could see that he was worried lest we had gone beyond the habitable part of the island. I know not how many times during this day we had before us a distant promontory, beyond which nothing of the island could be seen; but always, upon rounding it, we found another far ahead, and the land still bearing away to the south. At sunset, we had run twenty-three miles since noon; and in the gathering dusk we brought to under a close-reefed foresail, in shoal water within half a league of the shore.