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

and waved their feathery plumes in the air, and bananas with broad, enormous
leaves rustled in the breeze and cast a cool shadow on the ground.
Well might they gaze in great surprise, for all these curious and beautiful
trees were surrounded by and entwined in the embrace of luxuriant and remarkable
climbing plants. The parasitic vanilla with its star-like blossoms crept up
their trunks and along their branches, where it hung in graceful festoons or
drooped back again almost to the ground. So rich and numerous were these
creepers that in many cases they killed the strong giants whom they embraced so
lovingly. Some of them hung from the tree-tops like stays from the masts of a
ship, and many of them mingled their brilliant flowers so closely with the
leaves that the climbing plants and their supporters could not be distinguished
from each other, and it seemed as though the trees themselves had become
gigantic flowering shrubs.
Birds, too, were there in myriad's - and such birds! Their feathers were green
and gold and scarlet and yellow - and blue-fresh arid bright and brilliant as
the sky beneath which they were nurtured. The great toucan, with a beak nearly
as big as his body, flew clumsily from stem to stem. The tiny, delicate
humming-birds, scarce larger than bees, fluttered from flower to flower and
spray to spray like points of brilliant green. But they were irritable,
passionate little creatures, these lovely things, and quarrelled with each other
and fought like very wasps! Enormous butterflies, with wings of deep metallic
blue, shot past overhead in the air like gleams of light; and green paroquets
swooped from tree to tree, and chattered joyfully over their morning meal.
Well might they gaze with wonder, and smile too with extreme merriment, for
monkeys stared at them from between the leaves with expressions of undisguised
amazement, and bounded away shrieking and chattering in consternation, swinging
from branch to branch with incredible speed, and not scrupling to use each
other's tails to swing by when occasion offered. Some were big and red and
ugly-as ugly as you can possibly imagine, with blue faces and fiercely grinning
teeth; others were delicately formed, and sad of countenance, as if they were
for ever bewailing the loss of near and dear relations, and could by no means be
consoled; and some were small and pretty, with faces no bigger than a halfpenny.
As a general rule, it seemed to Barney, the smaller the monkey the longer the
tail.
Yes, well might they gaze and gaze again in surprise and in excessive
admiration; and well might Barney O'Flannagan. - under the circumstances, with
such sights and sounds around him, and the delightful odours of myrtle-trees and
orange blossoms and the Cape jessamine stealing up his nostrils - deem himself
the tenant of another world, and evince his conviction of the fact in that
memorable expression - " I've woked in paradise!"
But Barney began to find "paradise" not quite so comfortable as it ought to be;
for when he tried to get up he found his bones pained and stiff from sleeping in
damp clothes, and, moreover, his face was very much swelled, owing to the
myriad's of mosquitoes which had supped of it during the night.
"Arrah, then won't ye be done?" he cried angrily, giving his face a slap that
killed at least two or three hundred of his tormentors. But thousands more
attacked him instantly, and he soon found out - what everyone finds out sooner
or later in hot climates - that patience is one of the best remedies for
mosquito bites. He also discovered shortly afterwards that smoke is not a bad
remedy, in connection with patience.