"The Wrecker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stevenson Robert Louis)

the names of schooners and their captains will keep
coming and going, thick as may-flies; and news of the
last shipwreck will be placidly exchanged and debated.
To a stranger, this conversation will at first seem
scarcely brilliant; but he will soon catch the tone;
and by the time he shall have moved a year or so in the
island world, and come across a good number of the
schooners, so that every captain's name calls up a
figure in pyjamas or white duck, and becomes used to a
certain laxity of moral tone which prevails (as in
memory of Mr. Hayes) on smuggling, ship-scuttling,
barratry, piracy, the labour trade, and other kindred
fields of human activity, he will find Polynesia no
less amusing and no less instructive than Pall Mall or
Paris.

Mr. Loudon Dodd, though he was new to the group of the
Marquesas, was already an old, salted trader; he knew
the ships and the captains; he had assisted, in other
islands, at the first steps of some career of which he
now heard the culmination, or (VICE VERSA) he had
brought with him from further south the end of some
story which had begun in Tai-o-hae. Among other matter
of interest, like other arrivals in the South Seas, he
had a wreck to announce. The JOHN T. RICHARDS, it
appeared, had met the fate of other island schooners.

"Dickinson piled her up on Palmerston Island," Dodd
announced.

"Who were the owners?" inquired one of the club-men.

"O, the usual parties!" returned Loudon. "Capsicum and
Co."

A smile and a glance of intelligence went round the
group; and perhaps Loudon gave voice to the general
sentiment by remarking--

"Talk of good business! I know nothing better than a
schooner, a competent captain, and a sound reliable
reef."

"Good business! There's no such a thing!" said the
Glasgow man. "Nobody makes anything but the
missionaries--dash it!"

"I don't know," said another; "there's a good deal in
opium.