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

like he was a cat or something, God forgive me. He...."
He was interrupted by an unexpected, wild howl coming from behind.
The coalman, rolling his eyes fiercely and having cast off his drunken
stupor, suddenly began bawling a song, but with such force that it made
everyone jump:
Basket-maker, basket-maker, Skin us for your baskets!
"You're roaring drunk again, you damn whaleboat!" Menners shouted.
"Get out!"
But take care that you don't fall Right into our caskets!
the coalman bawled and then, as if nothing were amiss, he | dunked his
moustache into a slopping glass.
Hin Menners shrugged indignantly.
"He's the scum of the earth," he said with the sinister dignity of the
miser. "It happens every time!"
"Is there anything else you can tell me?" Gray asked.
"Me? I just told you her father's a bastard. On account of him, sir, I was
orphaned, and while still a boy was forced to earn my bread by the
sweat-of my brow."
"You're lying!" the coalman said unexpectedly. "You're lying so foully
and unnaturally that it's sobered me up."
Before Hin had a chance to open his mouth, the coalman addressed
Gray:
"He's lying. His father was a liar, too; as was his mother. It runs in the
family. Rest assured, she's as sane as you and me. I've spoken to her. She
rode in my cart eighty-four times or a bit less. If a girl's walking home
from town and I've sold all my coal, I'll always give her a lift. She might as
well ride. I'm saying that she has a sane head on her shoulders. You can
see that now. Naturally, she'd never talk to you, Hin Menners. But me, sir,
in my free coal trade, I despise gossip and rumours. She talks like a
grown-up, but her way of talking is strange. If you listen closely--it seems
like just the same as you and me would say, and it is, but yet, it isn't. For
instance, we got to talking about her trade. 'I'll tell you something,' she
said, and her holding onto my shoulder like a fly to a bell-tower, 'my work
isn't dull, but I keep wanting to think up something special. I want to find
a way to make a boat that'll sail by itself, with oarsmen that'll really row;
then, they'll dock at the shore, tie up and sit down on the beach to have a
bite, just exactly as if they were alive.' I started laughing, see, 'cause I
found it funny. So I said, 'Well, Assol, it's all because of the kind of work
you do, that's why you think like this, but look around; the way other
people work, you'd think they were fighting.' 'No,' she says, 'I know what I
know. When a fisherman's fishing he keeps thinking he'll catch a big fish,
bigger than anyone ever caught.' 'What about me?' 'You?' She laughed. 'IтАЩll
bet that when you fill your basket with coal you think it'll burst into
bloom.' That's the words she used! That very moment, I confess, I don't
know what made me do it, I looked into the empty basket, and I really
thought I was seeing buds coming out of the basket twigs; the buds burst
and leaves splashed all over the basket and were gone. I even sobered UP a
bit! But Hin Menners will lie in his teeth and never bat an eye--I know
him!"
Finding the conversation to have taken an obviously insulting turn,