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

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Day broke upon a woeful scene of desolation. The struggling dawn showed through the gray mirk a canopy of clouds torn and mangled by the wind into every conceivable shape, and a seething sea which boiled away to a dismal horizon, where the broken surface was tinged with a wan light, which added to the feeling of isolation and mystery that gathered round the scene. On our lee was a great misty dome, which we were rapidly approaching. It might be a cloud-form, or it might be an island, for all that we could see in the neutral-tinted gloom.

It seemed to me that our captain, who had lashed himself to the mizzen shrouds, was listening most intently to the thunder peals, which were now rapidly dying away. Suddenly he started and shrieked in my ear. “Did you not hear it?”

“I hear nothing but the distant roll of the thunder,” said I. “Let us hope we are now through the worst of it.”

“I am not mistaken,” he continued. “No one who has once heard the sullen roar of the South Sea reef with a lee shore before him ever forgets the sound. And see you not the big island rising right before us through the haze? Say all the prayers you know, boys, for to-night we sup with Davy Jones.”