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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“Water, water everywhere,

Yet not a drop to drink.”

In a short time, however, they dug a deep well, and soon reached plenty. Then the Malays attacked and surrounded them; at first a few score, at last six or seven hundred strong. Things looked black; but they erected a stockade, made rude pikes by sticking their knives, dirks, and small swords on the end of poles; and, although they had landed with just seventy-five ball-cartridges, their stock soon grew to fifteen hundred. How? Why, the sailors set to with a will, and made their own, the balls being represented by their jacket-buttons and pieces of the glass of broken bottles! Of loose powder they had, fortunately, a sufficient quantity. The Malays set the wreck on fire. The men waited till it had burned low, and then drove them off, and went and secured such of the stores as could be now reached, or which had floated off. The natives were gathering thick. Murray made his sailors a speech in true hearty style, and their wild huzzas were taken by the Malays for war-whoops: the latter soon “weakened,” as they say in America. From the highest officer to the merest boy, all behaved like calm, resolute, and sensible Britons, and every soul was saved. Lord Amherst, who had gone on to Batavia, sent a vessel for them, on board which Maxwell was the last to embark. At the time of the wreck their condition was infinitely worse than that of the Medusa; but how completely different the sequel! The story is really a pleasant one, displaying, as it does, the happy results of both good discipline and mutual good feeling in the midst of danger. Nil desperandum was evidently the motto of that crew; and their philosophy was rewarded. The lessons of the past and present, in regard to our great ships, have taught us that disaster is not confined to ironclads, nor victory to wooden walls; neither is good discipline dead, nor the race of true-hearted tars extinct. “Men of iron” will soon be the worthy successors of “hearts of oak.”