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

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I looked about me for a ship. Therein lay hope. I looked, not for a ship at anchor, unless she hove in view right on end of the course my oar was taking, but for a vessel in motion to hail as she came by; but I reckoned she must come by soon, for on testing my lungs when I thought of the shout I would raise if a ship came by, I discovered that she would have to pass very close if she was to hear me. Indeed, what I had undergone that night, from the moment of lighting upon the gibbet down to this moment of finding myself floating on one oar, had proved too much for my strength, extraordinarily robust as I was in those days: and then, again, the water was bitterly cold—cold, too, was the wind as it brushed me, with a constant feathering of ripples that kept my head and face wet for the wind to blow the colder upon.

The light was feeble, the moon shed but scant illumination, and whenever she was shadowed by a cloud, deep darkness closed over the sea. There were vessels near and vessels afar, but none to be of use. A large cutter was heading eastward about half a mile abreast of me; I shouted and continued to shout, but a drowning sigh would have been as audible to her people. She glided on, and when the moon went behind a cloud the loom of the cutter blended with the darkness, and when the moon came out again, and I looked for the vessel, I could not see her.