"Haggard, H Rider- Hunter Quatermain's Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haggard H. Rider)

suffering from a sharp attack of fever, which half blinded me and made
me weak as a babe. Our ammunition, too, was exhausted; I had only one
cartridge left for my eight-bore rifle, and Hans and Mashune, who were
armed with Martini Henrys, had three between them. It was about an
hour from sundown when we halted and lit a fire--for luckily we had
still a few matches. It was a charming spot to camp, I remember. Just
off the game track we were following was a little hollow, fringed
about with flat-crowned mimosa trees, and at the bottom of the hollow,
a spring of clear water welled up out of the earth, and formed a pool,
round the edges of which grew an abundance of watercresses of an
exactly similar kind to those which were handed round the table just
now. Now we had no food of any kind left, having that morning devoured
the last remains of a little oribщ antelope, which I had shot two days
previously. Accordingly Hans, who was a better shot than Mashune, took
two of the three remaining Martini cartridges, and started out to see
if he could not kill a buck for supper. I was too weak to go myself.

"Meanwhile Mashune employed himself in dragging together some dead
boughs from the mimosa trees to make a sort of 'skerm,' or shelter for
us to sleep in, about forty yards from the edge of the pool of water.
We had been greatly troubled with lions in the course of our long
tramp, and only on the previous night have very nearly been attacked
by them, which made me nervous, especially in my weak state. Just as
we had finished the skerm, or rather something which did duty for one,
Mashune and I heard a shot apparently fired about a mile away.

"'Hark to it!' sung out Mashune in Zulu, more, I fancy, by way of
keeping his spirits up than for any other reason--for he was a sort of
black Mark Tapley, and very cheerful under difficulties. 'Hark to the
wonderful sound with which the "Maboona" (the Boers) shook our fathers
to the ground at the Battle of the Blood River. We are hungry now, my
father; our stomachs are small and withered up like a dried ox's
paunch, but they will soon be full of good meat. Hans is a Hottentot,
and an "umfagozan," that is, a low fellow, but he shoots straight--ah!
he certainly shoots straight. Be of a good heart, my father, there
will soon be meat upon the fire, and we shall rise up men.'

"And so he went on talking nonsense till I told him to stop, because
he made my head ache with his empty words.

"Shortly after we heard the shot the sun sank in his red splendour,
and there fell upon earth and sky the great hush of the African
wilderness. The lions were not up as yet, they would probably wait for
the moon, and the birds and beasts were all at rest. I cannot describe
the intensity of the quiet of the night: to me in my weak state, and
fretting as I was over the non-return of the Hottentot Hans, it seemed
almost ominous--as though Nature were brooding over some tragedy which
was being enacted in her sight.

"It was quiet--quiet as death, and lonely as the grave.