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I
Captain Sharkey: How the Governor of Saint Kitt’s Came Home
(Капитан Шарки: Как губернатор Сент-Китта вернулся домой)
(когда великие войны за испанское наследство;
(множество: «огромное количество» капитанов каперских судов;
)
(вооруженных противоборствующими сторонами;
(остались не у дел: «обнаружили свое занятие потерянным»;
(одни избрали путь более мирной, но менее прибыльной обычной торговли;
(объявив на свой страх и риск свою собственную войну против всего рода человеческого;
).
When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce, others were absorbed into the fishing-fleets, and a few of the more reckless hoisted the Jolly Roger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the whole human race.
With mixed crews, recruited from every nation they scoured the seas, disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in for a debauch at some outlaying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by their lavishness and horrified them by their brutalities.
On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer and dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.
They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers, both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken whim of the moment.
Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean Gulf.
(таким человеком и был капитан корабля «Утренняя звезда» Джон Скарроу)
(когда услышал всплеск падающего якоря;
(Сент-Китт был последней точкой /в его маршруте/;
)
(и рано утром следующего /дня/ бушприт его /судна/ будет нацелен на старую /добрую/ Англию)
(с тех пор, как он покинул /порт/ Маракайбо на материке;[1]
(нагруженный под завязку сахаром и красным перцем;
(он вздрагивал при /виде/ каждого паруса;
)
(показавшегося над лиловой кромкой тропического моря;
(он курсировал вдоль /побережья/ Наветренных островов; to coast – плавать вдоль побережья), touching here and there (заходя в разные порты; to touch – прикасаться, трогать; заходить /в порт/; here and there – там и сям: «здесь и там», кое-где), and assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage (и повсюду: «непрерывно» его преследовали рассказы о злодействах и насилии; to assail – нападать, штурмовать).