"Bach, Richard - Jonathan Livingstone Seagull" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bach Richard)

As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within
him. There's no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature.
If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I'd have charts for brains.
If I were meant to fly at speed, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and live
on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this
foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a
poor limited seagull.
The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at
night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be a
normal gull. It would make everyone happier.
He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land,
grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying.
But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with
everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will
fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his
wings harder, pressing for shore.
He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the Flock.
There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn,
there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty,
just to stop thinking, and fly through the dark, toward the lights above
the beach.
Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the
dark!
Jonathan was not alert to listen. It's pretty, he thought. The moon
and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trails
through the night, and all so peaceful and still...
Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in
the dark, you'd have the eyes of an owl! You'd have charts for brains!
You'd have a falcon's short wings!
There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston
Seagull - blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished.
Short wings. A falcon's short wings!
That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little
wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips
alone! Short wings!
He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a
moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly
in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips
extended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive.
The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour,
ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a
hundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been
before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased
out of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball under the
moon.
He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred
forty miles per hour! And under control! If I dive from five thousand feet
instead of two thousand, I wonder how fast..
His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great
swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made