Читать книгу The Ark of 1803. A Story of Louisiana Purchase Times онлайн

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Young Captain Royce went slowly back to the shipyard, thinking of the sullen look in Jimmy Claiborne’s eyes.

“The boy means to make trouble,” he said to himself. But beyond the annoyance which would result from being obliged to refuse, if Jimmy got Uncle Amasa to plead for him, there seemed to be nothing much that Jimmy could do. Young as he was—scarcely twenty-two—Marion Royce had already won the confidence of the settlement by his courage and coolness, and those who had chosen him as leader and captain would certainly uphold him in any position which he might take in regard to the selection of his crew. But between being merely upheld in a disagreeable duty, and having the cordial good feeling of all the shareholders, there was much to choose.

He was tempted, as he went along through the woods between the little shipyard and the schoolhouse, to turn a deaf ear to his own better judgment. But he had made three trips down the river to New Orleans, and he knew the importance of an efficient crew, just as he knew the danger of a single insubordinate spirit.