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 had been four days at the hotel when Mr. Sparling, Surgeon-General of Java, had the kindness to invite Captain Bligh and me to be his guests at the seamen’s hospital, on an island in the river, three or four miles from the town. This hospital is a model of its kind, large enough to accommodate fifteen hundred men. The sick receive excellent care and attention, and the wards are scrupulously clean. Mr. Sparling, who had been educated in England, listened with great interest to the account of our voyage, and insisted that Captain Bligh send for those of his people who were ill. Late one afternoon I was sitting on my colleague’s shady verandah. He was smoking a long black cigarro; I lay on a settee with my bandaged leg stretched out on a stool. We were discussing the medical phases of our sufferings, Mr. Sparling expressing surprise that any man in the launch should have survived.

“You say that three of the people were forty-one days without evacuation?” he asked. “It is all but incredible!”