"Alexander Green - Crimson Sails" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Alexander)

Alexander Grin.

CRIMSON SAILS

A FANTASY

translated by Fainna Glagoleva


PROGRESS PUBLISHERS,
Moscow




From compilation: Alexander Grin, "The Seeker of Adventure, Selected
Stories",


OCR: Ivi
__________________________________________________
_______________


Presented and dedicated to Nina Nikolayevna Grin
by the AUTHOR
November 23,' 1922 Petrograd


I. THE PROPHESY

Longren, a sailor of the Orion, a rugged, three-hundred ton brig on
which he had served for ten years and to which he was attached more
strongly than some sons are to their mothers, was finally forced to give up
the sea.
This is how it came about. During one of his infrequent visits home he
did not, as he always had, see his wife Mary from afar, standing on the
doorstep, throwing up her hands and then running breathlessly towards
him. Instead, he found a distraught neighbour woman by the crib, a new
piece of furniture in his small house.
"I tended her for three months, neighbour," the woman said. "Here's
your daughter."
Longren's heart was numb with grief as he bent down and saw an
eight-month-old mite peering intently at his long beard. Then he sat
down, stared at the floor and began to twirl his moustache. It was wet as
from the rain.
"When did Mary die?" he asked.
The woman recounted the sad tale, interrupting herself to coo fondly at
the child and assure him that Mary was now in Heaven. When Longren
learned the details, Heaven seemed to him not much brighter than the