Читать книгу Travel Scholarships - Jules Verne - Страница 18

8 On Board

The voyage had gotten off to a good start for Mr. Patterson and the students of the Antillean School. They were taking a strong interest in even the slightest incidents along their route. A veritable flock of birds who had broken out of their cages—birds that were completely tamed and would come back. And this was only the beginning!

Indeed, it was not as if these young men were going on their first train or boat journey. They had all crossed the Atlantic Ocean when they had come from the Antilles to Europe, but this was not to say that the sea held no more secrets for them. They barely had any recollections of that voyage. The oldest of the group was at the most about ten years old when he first set foot in England. Sailing on board the Alert would be, then, something completely new for them. As for their mentor, it was the first time he would venture onto this treacherous element, to his extreme delight.

“Hoc erat in votis!”¹ he repeated, eighteen hundred years after Horace. At five o’clock, upon descending from the train in Bristol, the small troupe boarded the steamship with regular service between England and Ireland, a distance of about two hundred miles.