Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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About seven the next morning, the sea was again calm, when they found that twelve or more unfortunate men had, during the night, slipped between the interstices of the raft and perished. The effects of starvation were beginning to tell upon them:61 all their faculties were strangely impaired. Some fancied that they saw lighted signals in the distance, and answered them by firing off their pistols, or by setting fire to small heaps of gunpowder; others thought they saw ships or land, when there was nothing in sight. The next day strong symptoms of mutiny broke out, the officers being utterly disregarded by the soldiers. The evening again brought bad weather. “The people were now dashed about by the fury of the waves; there was no safety but in the centre of the raft,” where they packed themselves so close that many were nearly suffocated. “The soldiers and sailors, now considering their destruction inevitable, resolved to drown the sense of their situation by drinking till they should lose their reason;” nor could they be persuaded to forego their mad scheme. They rushed upon a cask of wine which was near the centre, and making a hole in it, drank so much, that the fumes soon mounted to their heads, in the empty condition in which they were; and “they then resolved to rid themselves of their officers, and afterwards to destroy the raft by cutting the lashings which kept it together.” One of them commenced hacking away at the ropes with a boarding-hatchet. The civil and military officers rushed on this ringleader, and though he made a desperate resistance, soon dispatched him. The people on the raft were now divided into two antagonistic parties—about twenty civil officers and the better class of passengers on one side, and a hundred or more soldiers and workmen on the other. “The mutineers,” says the narrative, “drew their swords, and were going to make a general attack, when the fall of another of their number struck such a seasonable terror into them that they retreated; but it was only to make another attempt at cutting the ropes. One of them, pretending to rest on the side-rail of the raft, began to work;” when he was discovered, and a few moments afterwards, with a soldier who attempted to defend him, was sent to his last account. This was followed by a general fight. An infantry captain was thrown into the sea by the soldiers, but rescued by his friends. He was then seized a second time, and the revolters attempted to put out his eyes. A charge was made upon them, and many put to death. The wretches threw overboard the only woman on the raft, together with her husband. They were, however, saved, only to die miserably soon afterwards.