"Philip Jose Farmer - 1952-1964" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

description of the life of his patron saint, the inventor of the first cherubim realizer and receiver, Jonas of
Carcassonne, who had been martyred when he grabbed a wire he thought was insulated.

The two sailors found excuses to walk off. The monk was a good fellow, but hagiography bored them.
Besides, they wanted to talk of womenтАж

If Columbus had not succeeded in persuading his crews to sail one more day, events would have been
different.

At dawn the sailors were very much cheered by the sight of several large birds circling their ships. Land
could not be far off; perhaps these winged creatures came from the coast of fabled Cipangu itself, the
country whose houses were roofed with gold.

The birds swooped down. Closer, they were enormous and very strange. Their bodies were flattish and
almost saucer-shaped and small in proportion to the wings, which had a spread of at least thirty feet. Nor
did they have legs. Only a few sailors saw the significance of that fact. These birds dwelt in the air and
never rested upon land or sea.

While they were meditating upon that, they heard a slight sound as of a man clearing his throat. So gentle
and far off was the noise that nobody paid any attention to it, for each thought his neighbor had made it.

A few minutes later, the sound had become louder and deeper, like a lute string being twanged.

Everybody looked up. Heads were turned west.
Even yet they did not understand that the noise like a finger plucking a wire came from the line that held
the earth together, and that the line was stretched to its utmost, and that the violent finger of the sea was
what had plucked the line.

It was some time before they understood. They had run out of horizon.

When they saw that, they were too late.

The dawn had not only come up like thunder, it was thunder. And though the three ships heeled over at
once and tried to sail close-hauled on the port tack, the suddenly speeded-up and relentless current
made beating hopeless.

Then it was the Rogerian wished for the Genoese screw and the wood-burning engine that would have
made them able to resist the terrible muscles of the charging and bull-like sea. Then it was that some men
prayed, some raved, some tried to attack the Admiral, some jumped overboard, and some sank into a
stupor.

Only the fearless Columbus and the courageous Friar Sparks stuck to their duties. All that day the fat
monk crouched wedged in his little shanty, dot-dashing to his fellow on the Grand Canary. He ceased
only when the moon rose like a huge red bubble from the throat of a dying giant. Then he listened intently
all night and worked desperately, scribbling and swearing impiously and checking cipher books.

When the dawn came up again in a roar and a rush, he ran from the toldilla, a piece of paper clutched in
his hand. His eyes were wild, and his lips were moving fast, but nobody could understand that he had
cracked the code. They could not hear him shouting, тАЬIt is the Portuguese! It is the Portuguese!тАЭ