"Martain Rattler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ballantyne R.M)

few adventurous mosquitoes - probably sea-faring ones - came down out of the
woods and attacked their bare bodies so vigorously that they were fain to hurry
on their clothes again before they were quite dry.
The clouds began to clear away soon after they landed, and the brilliant light
of the southern constellations revealed to them dimly the appearance of the
coast. It was a low sandy beach skirting the sea and extending back for about a
quarter of a mile in the form of a grassy plain, dotted here and there with
scrubby underwood.
Beyond this was a dark line of forest. The light was not sufficient to enable
them to ascertain the appearance of the interior. Barney and Martin now cast
about in their minds how they were to spend the night.
"Ye see," said the Irishman, "it's of no use goin' to look for houses, because
there's maybe none at all on this coast; an' there's no sayin' but we may fall
in with savages - for them parts swarms with them; so we'd better go into the
woods an---"
Barney was interrupted here by a low howl, which proceeded from the woods
referred to, and was most unlike any cry they had ever heard before.
"Och, but I'll think better of it. P'r'aps it'll be as well not to go into the
woods, but to camp where we are."
"I think so too," said Martin, searching about for small twigs and drift-wood
with which to make a fire. "There is no saying what sort of wild beasts may be
in the forest, so we had better wait till daylight."
A fire was quickly lighted by means of the pistol- flint and a little dry grass,
which, when well bruised and put into the pan, caught a spark after one or two
attempts, and was soon blown into a flame. But no wood large enough to keep the
fire burning for any length of time could be found; so Barney said he would go
up to the forest and fetch some. " I'll lave my shoes and socks, Martin, to
dry'at the fire. See ye don't let them burn."
Traversing the meadow with hasty strides, the bold sailor quickly reached the
edge of the forest, where he began to lop off several dead branches from the
trees with his cutlass. While thus engaged the howl which had formerly startled
him was repeated. "Av I only knowed what ye was," muttered Barney in a serious
tone, " it would be some sort o' comfort."
A loud cry of a different kind here interrupted his soliloquy, and, soon after,
the first cry was repeated louder than before.
Clenching his teeth and knitting his brows, the perplexed Irishman resumed his
work with a desperate resolve not to be again interrupted. But he had
miscalculated the strength of his nerves. Albeit as brave a man as ever stepped,
when his enemy was before him, Barney was, nevertheless, strongly imbued with
superstitious feelings; and the conflict between his physical courage and his
mental cowardice produced a species of wild exasperation which, he often
asserted, was very hard to bear. Scarcely had he resumed his work when a bat of
enormous size brushed past his nose so noiselessly that it seemed more like a
phantom than a reality. Barney had never seen anything of the sort before, and a
cold perspiration broke out upon him when he fancied it might be a ghost. Again
the bat swept past close to his eyes.
"Musha, but I'll kill ye, ghost or no ghost," he ejaculated, gazing all round
into the gloomy depths of the woods with his cutlass uplifted. Instead of flying
again in front of him, as he had expected, the bat flew with a whirring noise
past his ear. Down came the cutlass with a sudden thwack, cutting deep into the