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

dimly; it rushes on like a stallion in a jostling herd, crushing and shoving
aside, and halting; emptiness, confusion and delay attend it in turn. It
wanders within the souls of things; from bright agitation it hurries to
secret intimations; passing from earth to sky, conversing on the subject of
life with imaginary personages, snuffing out and embellishing one's
memories. In this cloudy movement all is live and palpable, and all is as
loosely hung together as a hallucination. And one's relaxing consciousness
often smiles, seeing, for instance, one's thoughts on life suddenly accosted
by a most inopportune visitor: perhaps a twig broken two years before.
Thus was Gray thinking by the fire, but he was "somewhere else"--not
there.
The elbow he was leaning on, while supporting his head on his hand,
became damp and numb. The stars shone faintly; the gloom was
intensified by a tenseness preceding dawn. The captain was dozing off, but
did not realize it. He felt like having a drink, and he put his hand out
towards the sack, untying it in his sleep. Then he stopped dreaming; the
next two hours were to him no longer than the seconds during which he
had laid his head upon his arms. Meanwhile, Letika had appeared by the
campfire twice, he had smoked and, out of curiosity, had looked into the
mouths of the fish he had caught, wondering what might be there. But,
quite naturally, nothing was.
Upon awakening, Gray forgot for a moment how he happened to be
where he was. He gazed in astonishment at the cheerful shine of the
morning, the bluff adorned by bright branches and the blazing blue
distance. The leaves of a hazel bush hung over the horizon and also over
his feet. At the bottom of the bluff--Gray felt it was right at his back--the
tide lapped softly. Falling from a leaf, a dewdrop spread over his sleepy
face in a cold splatter. He rose. Light had triumphed everywhere. The
cooling brands of the campfire clutched at life with a tendril of smoke. Its
aroma imparted a wild headiness to the pleasure of breathing the air of
the green woods.
Letika was nowhere in sight; he was oblivious to all; he sweated as he
fished with the zeal of a true gambler. Gray left the woods for the
bush-dotted slope. The grass smoked and flamed; the moist flowers
resembled children who had been forcibly scrubbed with cold water. The
green world breathed with myriad tiny mouths, blocking Gray's way
through its exultant cluster. The captain finally got to a clearing
overgrown with grass and flowers, and here he saw a sleeping girl.
He cautiously moved aside a branch and stopped, feeling that he had
made a dangerous discovery. But five steps away lay a tired Assol, curled
up with one leg tucked under her and the other stretched out, and her
head resting on her comfortably crossed arms. Her hair was mussed; a
button had come undone at her collar, revealing a white hollow; her
tumbled skirt had bared her knees; her lashes slept upon her cheek in the
shadow of her delicately curved temple, half-covered by a dark lock; the
pinky of her right hand, which was under her head, curled over the back of
her head. Gray squatted and looked into the girl's face from below, never
suspecting that he resembled the Faun in Arnold Bocklin's painting.
Perhaps, under other circumstances, he would have noticed the girl
with his eyes alone, but now he saw her differently. Everything stirred,