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

110 страница из 122

He resumed his seat in his bed, and, pulling from his pocket the little book from which he had read the particulars of the cargo in the main hold of La Perfecta Casada, he fastened his eyes upon a page of it, mused a while, and proceeded thus:

“We left the Spanish ship, pulled clear of the reef, and got aboard the Hero. I called my mate to me, told him that the island was uncharted, and that it behoved us to clearly ascertain its situation in order to correctly report its whereabouts. Together we went to work to determine its position; our calculations fairly tallied, and I was satisfied. I then ordered sail to be trimmed, and we proceeded on our voyage. When the ship had fairly started afresh I went into my cabin and examined the papers I had brought off the Casada. Those papers were, of course, written in Spanish. Though I speak Spanish very imperfectly, almost unintelligibly, I can make tolerable headway, with the help of a dictionary, when I read it. I possessed an English-Spanish dictionary, and I sat down to translate the Casada’s papers. Then it was that I discovered there were five thousand serons of cocoa among the cargo. I did not count those serons when I was on board.”