"Dunsany, Lord - collection - Tales of Three Hemispheres" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

other dead but "Bwona Khubla," the name the Kikuyus gave him.
There is not doubt that he was a fearful man, a man that was dreaded still
for his personal force when his arm was no longer able to lift the kiboko,
when all his men knew he was dying, and to this day though he is dead.
Though his temper was embittered by malaria and the equatorial sun, nothing
impaired his will, which remained a compulsive force to the very last,
impressing itself upon all, and after the last, from what the Kikuyus say.
The country must have had powerful laws that drove Bwona Khubla out,
whatever country it was.
On the morning of the day that they were to come to the camp of Bwona Khubla
all the porters came to the travelers' tents asking for dow. Dow is the
white man's medicine, that cures all evils; the nastier it tastes, the
better it is. They wanted down this morning to keep away devils, for they
were near the place where Bwona Khubla died.
The travelers gave them quinine.
By sunset the came to Campini Bwona Khubla and found water there. Had they
not found water many of them must have died, yet none felt any gratitude to
the place, it seemed too ominous, too full of doom, too much harassed almost
by unseen, irresistible things.
And all the natives came again for dow as soon as the tents were pitched, to
protect them from the last dreams of Bwona Khubla, which they say had stayed
behind when the last safari left taking Bwona Khubla's body back to the edge
of civilization to show to the white men there that they had not killed him,
for the white men might not know that they durst not kill Bwona Khubla.
And the travelers gave them more quinine, so much being bad for the nerves,
and that night by the camp-fires there was no pleasant talk; all talking at
once of meat they had eaten and cattle that each one owned, but a gloomy
silence hung by every fire and the little canvas shelters. They told the
white men that Bwona Khubla's city, of which he had thought at the last (and
where the natives believed he was once a king), of which he had raved till
the loneliness rang with his raving, had settled down all about them; and
they were afraid, for it was so strange a city, and wanted more dow. And the
two travelers gave them more quinine, for they saw real fear in their faces,
and knew they might run away and leave them alone in that place, that they,
too, had come to fear with an almost equal dread, though they knew not why.
And as the night wore on their feeling of boding deepened, although they had
shared three bottles or so of champagne that they meant to keep for days
when they killed a lion.
This is the story that each of those two men tell, and which their porters
corroborate, but then a Kikuyu will always say whatever he thinks is
expected of him.
The travelers were both in bed and trying to sleep but not able to do so
because of an ominous feeling. That mournfullest of all the cries of the
wild, the hyцna like a damned soul lamenting, strangely enough had ceased.
The night wore on to the hour when Bwona Khubla had died three or four years
ago, dreaming and raving of "his city"; and in the hush a sound softly
arose, like a wind at first, then like the roar of beasts, then unmistakably
the sound of motors--motors and motor busses.
And then they saw, clearly and unmistakably they say, in that lonely
desolation where the equator comes up out of the forest and lcimbs over