"Michael Ende - Momo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ende Michael)

-- it's the girls' only hope."
"Dolphin" Franco and his frogmen climbed back on board. After going astern for a short
distance, the Argo headed straight for the jellyfish at maximum speed. The steel ship's bow was as sharp
as a razor. Without a sound -- almost without a jolt -- it sliced the huge creature in half. Although this
manoeuvre was fraught with danger for the girls entangled in its tentacles, Jim Ironside had gauged his
course to within a hair's breadth and steered right between them. Instantly, the tentacles on each half of
the jellyfish went limp and lifeless, and the trapped girls managed to extricate themselves.
They were welcomed back on board with joy. Professor Eisenstein hurried over to them. "It was
all my fault," he said. "I should never have sent you down there. Forgive me for risking your lives like
that."
"There's nothing to forgive, Professor," one of the girls replied with a carefree laugh. "It's what we
came for, after all."
 "Danger's our trade," the other girl put in.
But there was no time to say more. Because of the rescue operation, the captain and his crew
had completely forgotten to keep watch on the sea. Only now, in the nick of time, did they become
aware that the Travelling Tornado had appeared on the horizon and was racing towards them.
An immense roller tossed the Argo into the air, hurled her on to her side, and sent her
plummeting into a watery abyss. Any crew less courageous and experienced than the Argo's would have
been washed overboard or paralysed with fear by this very first onslaught, but Captain Gordon stood
four-square on his bridge as though nothing had happened, and his sailors were just as unperturbed.
Momosan, the beautiful native girl, being unaccustomed to such storm-tossed seas, was the only person
to take refuge in a lifeboat.
The whole sky turned pitch-black within seconds. Shrieking and roaring, the tornado flung itself
at the Argo, alternately catapulting her sky-high and sucking her down into cavernous troughs. Its fury
seemed to grow with every passing minute as it strove in vain to crush the ship's steel hull.
The captain calmly gave orders to the first mate, who passed them on to the crew in a stentorian
voice. Everyone remained at his or her post. Professor Eisenstein and his assistants, far from abandoning
their scientific instruments, used them to estimate where the eye of the storm must be, for that was the
course to steer. Captain Gordon secretly marvelled at the composure of these scientists, who were not,
after all, as closely acquainted with the sea as himself and his crew.
A shaft of lightning zigzagged down and struck the ship's hull, electrifying it from stem to stern.
Sparks flew whenever the crew touched anything, but none of them worried. Everyone on board had
spent months training hard for just such an emergency. The only trouble was, the thinner parts of the ship
-- cables and stanchions, for instance -- began to glow like the filament in an electric light bulb, and this
made the crew's work harder despite the rubber gloves they were wearing.
Fortunately, the glow was soon extinguished by a downpour heavier than anyone on board, with
the exception of Jim Ironside, had ever experienced. There was no room for any air between the
raindrops -- they were too close together -- so they all had to put on masks and breathing apparatus.
Flashes of lightning and peals of thunder followed one another in quick succession, the wind
howled, and mast-high breakers deluged everything with foam. With all engines running full ahead, the
Argo inched her way forward against the elemental might of the storm. Down below in the boiler rooms,
engineers and stokers made superhuman efforts. They had lashed themselves in place with stout ropes so
that the ship's violent pitching and tossing would not hurl them into the open furnaces.
But when, at long last, the Argo and her crew reached the innermost eye of the storm, what a
sight confronted them!
Gyrating on the surface of the sea, which had been ironed flat as a pancake by the sheer force of
the storm, was a huge figure. Seemingly poised on one leg, it grew wider the higher one looked, like a
mountainous humming-top rotating too fast for the eye to make it out in any detail.
"A Teetotum elasticum!" the professor exclaimed gleefully, holding on to his glasses to prevent
them from being washed off his nose by the rain.