Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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“Did the water shoal rapidly in the cave?” said I.

“Yes; the ship lies cradled to her midship section; forward she may be afloat. But there she lies hard and fast for all that, motionless as the mass of rock in whose heart she sleeps.”

“You boarded her, I suppose?”

“Certainly I boarded her,” continued Greaves. “It is by no means so dusky inside the cave as it appeared to be when viewed from the outside. I left a hand to attend the boat and took three men aboard. I believe I should not have had the spirit to enter that ship alone. By Isten! but she did show very ghastly in that gloom—very ghastly and cold and silent, with the appalling silence of entombment. No noise—I mean that faint, thunderous noise of distant surf—no noise of breakers penetrated. Well, to be sure, by listening you might now and again catch a drowning, bubbling, gasping sound, stealthily washing through the black water in the cave along the sides of the ship; but I tell you that I found the stillness inside that cave heart-shaking. I went right aft and looked over the stern, and there it was like gazing into a tunnel. How far did the cavern extend abaft? There would be one and an easy way of finding that out—by rowing into the blackness and burning a flare in the boat. This I thought I would do if I could make time.