"Children's Books - Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Children's Books)

our anchor had come home; upon which our master ordered out the
sheet anchor, so that we rode with two anchors ahead, and the cables
veered out to the better end.
By this time it blew a terrible storm indeed, and now I began to see
terror and amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The
master, though vigilant to the business of perserving the ship, yet as
he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly to
himself say several times, "Lord be merciful to us, we shall be all
lost, we shall be all undone"; and the like. During these first
hurries I was stupid, lying still in my cabin, which was in the
steerage, and cannot describe my temper; I could ill reassume the
first penitence, which I had so apparently trampled upon, and hardened
myself against; I though the bitterness of death had been past, and
that this would be nothing too, like the first. But when the master
himself came by me, as I said just now, and said we should be all
lost, I was dreadfully frighted; I got up out of my cabin, and
looked out but such a dismal sight I never saw: the sea went mountains
high, and broke upon us every three or four minutes; when I could look
about, I could see nothing but distress round us. Two ships that rid
near us we found had cut their masts by the board, being deep
loaden; and our men cried out that a ship which rid about's mile ahead
of us was foundered. Two more ships being driven from their anchors,
were run out of the roads to sea at all adventures, and that with
not a mast standing. The light ships fared the best, as not so much
laboring in the sea; but two or three of them drove, and came close by
us, running away with only their sprit-sail out before the wind.
Towards evening the mate and boatswain begged the master of our ship
to let them cut away the foremast, which he was very unwilling to. But
the boatswain, protesting to him that if he did not the ship would
founder, he consented; and when they had cut away the foremast, the
mainmast stood so loose, and shook the ship so much, they were obliged
to cut her away also, and make a clear deck.
Any one may judge what a condition I must be in all this, who was
but a young sailor, and who had been in such a fright before at but
a little. But if I can express at this distance the thoughts I had
about me at that time, I was in tenfold more horror of mind upon
account of my former convictions, and then having returned from them
to the resolutions I had wickedly taken at first, than I was at
death itself; and these, added to the terror of the storm, put me into
such a condition that I can by no words describe it. But the worst was
not come yet; the storm continued with such fury that the seamen
themselves acknowledged they had never known a worse. We had a good
ship, but she was deep loaden, and wallowed in the sea, that the
seamen every now and then cried out she would founder. It was my
advantage in one respect, that I did not know what they meant by
founder till I inquired. However, the storm was so violent 'that I saw
what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others
more sensible than the rest, at their prayers, and expecting every
moment when the ship would go to the bottom. In the middle of the
night, and under all the rest of our distresses, one of the men that