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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We were drawn together that night as never before. We had suffered so much that we seemed of one body. Antipathies, whether small or large, arising from our different characters, vanished quite away, and a rich current of sympathy and common feeling ran through our forlorn little company, making us, for that night at least, brothers indeed. I had observed many different aspects of Mr. Bligh’s character, and, profoundly as I respected him, I had not supposed that he had in him any deep feeling of compassion for the men under his command. On this occasion he revealed a gentleness which quite altered my conception of his nature. The experience brought home to me the difficulty one has in forming a true notion of any of one’s fellow creatures. They must be seen over a long period of time, and under many and varied conditions not often presenting themselves in sequence to a single observer. But some men are ever the same, unchanging and unchangeable as rock, no matter what the conditions. Cole, the boatswain, was one of these. Loyalty to his commander, devotion to duty, sympathy for those weaker than himself, and an abiding trust in God were the corner stones of his nature. All through that interminable night he was ever on the alert to do some suffering man a kindness.