Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

11 страница из 65

But a sailor bound for the South Seas in those days was not over particular about his personal comfort. He had the romance of adventure before him. Little was known of these seas, and all vessels which sailed on them were more or less ships of discovery. The fate of La Perouse, whose visit to Port Jackson, where he last saw the home of the white man, I had often heard my father speak of, was still shrouded in mystery, and we might even come upon the survivors of his unfortunate expedition, who were believed to be imprisoned in some of the island groups we purposed visiting. With all the interest of a new world opening before me I was disposed to think lightly of the hardships in store.

The ship’s company consisted of the master, Jacob Turner, an old weatherbeaten tar, of mahogany complexion, with short, thick whiskers like tufts of cocoanut fibre, who had many strange experiences of lawless regions to tell; the mate, Silas Cobb, a Yankee who had served in an American whaler and knew much of the adventurous life of the whale fisheries; two English sailors who had run away from their last ship in Hobart Town; an escaped New South Wales convict, a cabin boy, and myself. We were short-handed, but that was no unusual occurrence.