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Excerpt from The Cradle of the Deep: An Account of a Voyage to the West Indies
That fervent spirit of adventure and romance which set aglow the heart of every lad in every sea town of England, when Elizabeth was queen, found both its source and its end among the West Indies and by the Spanish Main.
The palm-covered island, the secret creek, the white-walled Spanish town formed the scene of ever-inspiring dreams. The boy from the grandmotherly coaster, who found his way into Plymouth Sound, would sit on a bollard on the quay and listen to sunbrowned men talking of Indians and sea fights, of Plate ships and pieces of eight, until his soul so burned within him that he turned upon his own homely craft, and shipped as powder-boy on the first galliasse making for the heroic West.
In these fair islands were gold and pearls, they said, as well as birds and beasts beyond the imagination of man. Here under the steaming sun of the tropics the pirate harried the sea, and here, in blood, smoke, and cutlass hacks his tale was writ. In coves among the islands he careened his ship and hid his treasure, in blue sea alleys he watched for Spanish merchantmen, and in fever-stricken jungles he rotted and died. For over a century the famous Buccaneers were the terror of the Spanish Main, while to every sturdy British lad, for all these years, the call of the sea rover was as the call of the wild.
The very first glimpse of the New World that met the gaze of Columbus was a glimpse of a West Indian island.
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Издательство: "Книга по Требованию" (2015)
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