Читать книгу The Castaways of the Flag: The Final Adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson онлайн

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James Wolston’s affairs had all been wound up satisfactorily.

But they found themselves confronted by the impossibility of putting to sea at once. The damage done to the Unicorn was serious enough to necessitate a prolonged stay in Cape Town harbour. It would take two or three months to make repairs, after her cargo had been taken out of the corvette. She could not possibly sail for New Switzerland before the end of October.

But the passengers on the Unicorn had an unexpected opportunity of shortening their stay at the Cape.

There happened to be in the harbour a vessel, due to sail in a fortnight. She was the Flag, an English three-masted vessel of five hundred tons, captain Harry Gould, bound for Batavia, in the Sunda Islands. To put in at New Switzerland would take her very little out of her course, and the passengers for the island were prepared to pay a good price for their passage.

Their proposal was accepted by Captain Gould, and the Unicorn’s passengers transferred their baggage to the Flag.