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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The richness of the verdure which clothes these islands to their highest peaks seems a mere coat of green fur, and yet is often gigantic forest trees. The eye wanders over the green abysses, and strains over the wealth of depths and heights, compared with which fine English parks are mere shrubberies. There is every conceivable green, or rather of hues, ranging from pale yellow through all greens into cobalt; and “as the wind stirs the leaves, and sweeps the lights and shadows over hill and glen, all is ever-changing, iridescent, like a peacock’s tail; till the whole island, from peak to shore, seems some glorious jewel—an emerald, with tints of sapphire and topaz, hanging between blue sea and white surf below, and blue sky and white cloud above.” And yet, over all this beauty, dark shadows hang—the shadow of war and the shadow of slavery. These seas have been oft reddened with the blood of gallant sailors, and every other gully holds the skeleton of an Englishman.

Here it was that Rodney broke De Grasse’s line, took and destroyed seven French ships of war, and scattered the rest: saving Jamaica, and, in sooth, the whole West Indies, and bringing about the honourable peace of 1783. Yon lovely roadstead of Dominica: there Rodney caught up with the French just before, and would have beaten them so much the earlier but for his vessels being becalmed. In that deep bay at Martinique, now lined with gay houses, was for many years the Cul-de-sac Royal, the rendezvous and stronghold of the French fleet. That isolated rock hard by, much the shape and double the size of the great Pyramids, is Sir Samuel Hood’s famous Diamond Rock,113 to which that brave old navigator literally tied with a hawser or two his ship, the Centaur, and turned the rock into a fortress from whence to sweep the seas. The rock was for several months rated on the books of the Admiralty as “His Majesty’s Ship, Diamond Rock.” She had at last to surrender, for want of powder, to an overwhelming force—two seventy-fours and fourteen smaller ships of war—but did not give in till seventy poor Frenchmen were lying killed or wounded, and three of their gun-boats destroyed, her own loss being only two men killed and one wounded. Brave old sloop of war! And, once more, those glens and forests of St. Lucia remind us of Sir John Moore and Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who fought, not merely the French, but the “Brigands”—negroes liberated by the Revolution of 1792.