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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Martin was asleep. McCoy took up the bottle beside him and held it up to the light. “Isaac’s a good sup left here, lads.”

“Leave that,” Mills growled. “It’s his, ain’t it?”

“Will it be safe, think ye? Matt might wake ...”

“So he might; there’s a good Scotch reason,” said Smith. “Pass it round, Will.”

Having emptied the bottle, they left it at Martin’s side, and the men proceeded slowly down the valley, Smith leading the way. They found no one at the tents; Mills left Prudence there and they went along the roughly cleared path to the lookout point above the cove. The ship was burning fiercely, flames and sparks streaming high in the air. In the red glare they could plainly see the other members of the Bounty’s company seated among the rocks on the narrow foreshore.

“She makes a grand light,” McCoy, glumly.

“Aye,” said Smith.

They were silent after that.

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A deeper awareness of their isolation from the world of men now came home to them. The empty sea walled them round, and the ship, burned to the water’s edge but still lying where she had been driven upon the rocks, was an eloquent reminder to all of the irrevocable nature of their fate. For some of the white men, in particular, the sight of the blackened hulk, washed over by the sea, had a gloomy fascination not to be resisted. In the evening when work for the day was over, they would come singly, or in groups of two or three, to the lookout point above the cove and sit there until the last light had left the sky, gazing down upon all that remained of the vessel as though they could not yet realize that she was lost to them forever.