"Anderson, Poul - Boat of a Million Years, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

out and cast anchor at sunset. It was better to huddle tireless than dare those unknown approaches. On the fourth day there appeared above haze the red and yellow heights of an island. Pytheas decided to pass between it and the main shore. His vessels battled their way on until dark.
Men saw no dawn, for air had thickened further. Aft of them a whiteness towered from edge to unseen edge of the world. They had a light breeze and visibility of about a dozen Athenian stadia, so they hoisted dripping sails. The sheer island began to fall behind them, and ahead, to starboard, they spied a murk that ought to be a lesser one. Noise of breakers loudened, an undergroundish thunder.
Then the white wall rolled over them, and they were blind. The breeze died and they lay helpless.
Never had they known or heard of a fog such as this. A man amidships saw neither bow nor stern; vision lost itself in smothering, eddying gray. Over the side he could barely make out turbulence streaked with foam. Water settled on cordage and fell off in a wicked little ram. The deck sheened with it. Wetness weighted hair, clothes, breath, while cold gnawed inward to the bone, as if he were already drowning. The formlessness was full of noise. Seas grew heavier, timbers groaned, the hull swayed crazily. Billows rushed and rumbled, surf roared. Horns hooted, crew wailed themselves hoarse, ship called desperately to unseen ship.
Pytheas, aft by the helm, shook his head. "What makes the waves rise when we have no wind?" he asked through the tumult.
The steersman gripped his useless tiller and shuddered. "Things out o' the deeps," he rasped, "or the gods o' these waters, angry that we trouble them."
"Launch the boats," Hanno advised Pytheas. "They'll give some warning if we're about to drift onto a rock, and maybe they can pull us clear."
The steersman bared teeth. "Oh, no, you don't!" he cried. "You'll not send men down to the demon-beasts. They won't go."
"I won't send them," Hanno retorted. "I'll lead them."
"Or I," Pytheas said.
It became the Phoenician who shook his head. "We can't risk you. Who else could have brought us this far, or can
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bring us home? Without you we're all dead. Come help me put spirit into the crew."
He got his men, because Pytheas' calm words damped the terror in them. They unlashed a boat, dragged it to the side, shoved it over a rail when the deck canted and white-maned waves galloped just beneath. Hanno sprang down, braced calves between two thwarts, took an oar a sailor handed him, fended off while his rowers followed one by one. They fought free at the end of a towline and the next boat came after.
"I do hope the other skippersЧ" began Hanno. A dash of brine choked off what nobody heard anyhow.
The ship was gone into wet smoke. The boat climbed a comber that was tike a moving hillside, hovered on the crest, plunged into a trough where men looked up the heights of water around them. Noise rolled empty of direction. Hanno, at the rudder, could only try to keep the hawser unfouled behind him. "Stroke!" he bawled. "Stroke, stroke, stroke!" Men gasped at oars and bailing buckets. The sea lapped around their ankles.
A monstrous grip seized them. They whirled. A cataract leaped out of the fog. It burst over their heads. When they could see again, the ship was upon them. The boat smashed into her hull. The water ground it against the strakes. Wood broke, tore free of nails, shrieked. The boat fell asunder.
Pytheas beheld it. A man flailed arms and legs. The sea dashed him at the ship. His skull split open. Brains, blood, body went under.
"Lines out!" Pytheas shouted. He himself didn't stop to uncoil any from a bollard. He drew his knife and slashed a sheet free of the slack mainsail. When he cast the end overboard, it disappeared in fog and foam. None of the swimmers he glimpsed, lost, glimpsed again had noticed it.
He signalled for another length. The cut sheet still cleated and in his left hand, he slid over the rail. Feet planted on the hull, arm straining to hold the cordage taut and himself in place, he leaned straight out. With his right hand he swung the second line like a whip.
Now he was visible to those he would save, except when the vessel rose onto that side and a wave fountained across him. A man swung past. Pytheas flicked the loose line at his face. The man caught it. Sailors on deck hauled him aboard.
The third whom Pytheas rescued was Hanno, clinging to an oar. After that, his strength was spent. He got back with the help of two mariners and fell in a heap beside the Phoenician. No others attempted his feat; but no more waifs came to sight in the rage around.
Hanno stirred. "To the cabin, you and me and these two," he said through clattering teeth. "Else the cold will kill us. We wouldn't have lived ten minutes in that water."
In the shelter, men stripped, toweled till blood awoke to stinging life, pulled blankets tightly about themselves. "You were magnificent, my friend," Hanno said. "I wouldn't have supposed you, a scholarЧtough, but a scholarЧcould do it."
"Nor would I have." Exhaustion flattened Pytheas' voice.
"You saved us few from the consequences of my folly." - "No folly. Who could have foreseen the sea in windless air would go so wild so fast?"
"What might have done it?"
"Demons," mumbled a sailor.
"No," Pytheas replied. "It must have been a trick of these enormous Atlantic tides, thrusting through a strait cluttered with isles and reefs."
Hanno mustered a chuckle. "Still the philosopher, you!"
"We've a boat left," Pytheas said. "And our luck may turn. Beseech your gods if you like, boys." He lay down on his pallet. "I am going to sleep."
6
THE SHIPS survived, though one scraped a rock and opened seams. When fog had lifted and waters somewhat calmed, rowers pulled the three to the high island. They found a safe anchorage with a sloping strand where, at low water, they could work to repair damage.
Several families lived nearby: unshorn, skin-clad fishers who kept a few animals and scratched in tiny gardens. Their dwellings were dry-laid stones and turf roofs above pits. At first they fled and watched from afar. Pytheas ordered goods set out, and they timidly returned to collect these. Thereafter the Greeks were their house guests.
That proved fortunate. A gale came from the west. The ships got barely adequate protection from the bluffs around
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the east-side inlet, but everywhere else the storm ramped unchecked for days and nights. Men could not stand against it. Indoors they must struggle to speak and hear through the racket. Breakers higher than city battlements hurled themselves onto the western cliffs. Stones Weighing tons broke from their beds in what had been the shallows. Earth trembled. The air was a torrent of spume, whose salt flayed faces and blinded eyes. It was as if the world had toppled into primordial chaos.
Pytheas, Hanno, and their companions hunched crowded together on dried seaweed strewn over a dirt floor in a cave of gloom. Coals glowed faint red on the hearthstone. Smoke drifted acrid through the chill. Pytheas was another shadow, his words a whisper amidst the violence: "The fog, and now this. Here is neither sea nor land nor air. They have all become one, a thing like a sea-lung. Farther north can only be the Great Ice. I think we are near the border of life's kingdom." They saw his head lift. "But we have not come to the end of our search."
EASTWARD OVERSEA, four days' sail from the northern tip of Pretania, the explorers found another land. It rose sharply out of the water, but holms protected a great bay. On an arm of this dwelt folk who received newcomers kindly. They were not Keltoi, being even more tall and fair. Their language was kin to a Germanic tongue which Hanno had gotten a little of on an earlier wandering; he could soon make himself understood. Their iron tools and weapons, arts and way of life, did bear a Keltic mark. However, their spirit seemed different, more sober, less possessed by the unearthly.
The Greeks meant to abide a short while, inquire about those realms that were their goal, take on fresh supplies, and proceed. But their stay lengthened. Toil, danger, loss had worn them down. Here they found hospitality and admiration. As they gained words, they won full comradeship, shared in undertakings, swapped thoughts and recollections and songs, sported, made merry. The women were welcoming. Nobody urged Pytheas to order anchors up or asked why he did not.
The guests were no parasites. They brought wonderful gifts. On a ship of theirs they carried men who knew only longboats fashioned of planks stitched together, driven by paddles. Those men learned more about their own waters and communities elsewhere than they had dreamed they might. Trade followed, and visits to and fro for the first time ever. Hunting was excellent in the hinterland, and the soldiers fetched plenty of meat home. The presence of the Greeks, their revelation of an outside world, gave new sparkle to life. They felt themselves taken into brotherhood.
This was the country its people named Thule.
Midsummer came, with the light nights.
Hanno and a lass went to gather berries. Alone under the sweetnesses of birch trees, they made love. The long day tired her, and after they returned to her father's house she fell happily asleep. He could not. He lay for an hour on their bed of hides, feeling her warm against him, hearing her and her family breathe, himself inhaling the fragrance and pungency of the cows stalled at the far end of the single long room. A banked fire sometimes let slip a flamelet, but what made soft dusk was the sky beyond the wickerwork door. Finally he rose, pulled his tunic back over his head, and stole forth.