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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But Williams was far from satisfied; he wanted the girl for his own. What had begun as mere philandering gradually became an obsession. On many a night he lay awake far into the morning hours, torturing his brain in attempts to conjure up some means of obtaining Hutia. Now at last he felt that he could endure no more. One afternoon when he was working with Mills at the forge he put down his hammer.

“Stand by for a bit, John,” he said.

Mills straightened his back with a grunt. “What’s up?” he asked, incuriously.

“I can’t go on the like o’ this. Every man of ye has his woman. I’ve none.”

“Ye’ll not get mine,” growled Mills. “Take a girl from one of the Indians.”

“Aye, Hutia’d do.”

The other gave a dry laugh. “Ye should know! A pretty wench, but an artful one, Prudence reckons.”

“I’m thinkin’ what Christian would say; and Minarii ...”

“Damn the Indians! Call for a show of hands. Ye’ve the right. Where’d we be without Jack Williams and his forge?”

Christian’s house was the most westerly in the settlement, and stood on rising ground close to the bluffs, which sloped more gently here than at Bounty Bay. To the west, a deep ravine led the waters of Brown’s Well to the shingle, three hundred feet below. A belt of trees and bush along the verge of the bluffs screened the house from the sea.