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

everything smiled within him. Naturally, he did not know her or her name,
or, moreover, why she had fallen asleep on the shore; but he was very
pleased by this. He liked pictures that were accompanied neither by an
explanatory text nor by a caption. The impression such a picture makes is
far more powerful; its content, unencumbered by words, becomes
boundless, affirming all conjectures and thoughts.
The shadow cast by the leaves was approaching the trunks, but Gray
still squatted there in that uncomfortable position. Everything about the
girl was asleep: her dark hair slept, her dress slept, as did the pleats of her
skirt; even the grass near her body, it seemed, was dozing out of sympathy.
When the impression became complete, Gray entered its warm, engulfing
waves and sailed off on it. Letika had been shouting for some time:
"Captain! Where are you?", but the captain heard him not.
When he finally rose, a predilection for the unusual caught him
unawares with the determination and inspiration of an angered woman.
Giving way to it pensively, he removed the treasured old ring from his
finger, thinking, and not without reason, that perhaps, in this way, he was
suggesting something essential to life, similar to orthography. He slipped
the ring gently onto the pinky that showed white under the back of her
head. The pinky twitched in annoyance and curled up. Glancing once
again at this resting face, Gray turned to see the sailor's sharply-raised
brows. Letika was gaping as he watched the captain's movements with the
kind of astonishment Jonah must have felt as he gazed down the maw of
his furnished whale.
"Ah, it's you, Letika! Look at her. Isn't she beautiful?" "A wondrous
painting!" the sailor shouted in a whisper, for he liked bookish
expressions. "There's something prepossessing in the presentation of the
circumstances. I caught four morays and another one, as round as a
bladder."
"Shh, Letika. Let's get out of here." They retreated into the bushes. They
should have turned back to the rowboat now, but Gray procrastinated,
looking off into the distance at the low bank, where the morning smoke
from the chimneys of Kaperna streamed over the greenery and the sand.
In the smoke he once again saw the girl-Then he turned determinedly and
went down the slope; the sailor did not question him about what had
happened, but walked on behind; he sensed that once again a compulsory
silence ensued. When they reached the first houses Gray suddenly said,
"Can your practised eye tell us where the tavern is, Letika?"
"It must be that black roof," Letika mused, "but then, again, maybe it
isn't."
"What's so special about that roof?"
"I really don't know, Captain. Nothing more than the voice of my heart."
They approached the house; it was indeed Menners' tavern. Through
the open window they could see a bottle on the table; beside it someone's
dirty hand was milking a steel-grey moustache.
Although it was still early in the day there were three men in the
common room. The coalman, the owner of the drunken grey moustache
already noted, was sitting by the window; two fishermen were lodged
around some scrambled eggs and beer at a table set between the bar and
an inner door. Menners, a tall young man with a dull, freckled face and