"BretHarte-TheQueenOfThePirateIsle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harte Bret)

and turned pale at its threshold.

"Mebbee a wicked Joss backside holee, he catchee Pilats," said Wan
Lee gravely.

Hickory began to whimper, Patsey drew back, Polly alone stood her
ground, albeit with a trembling lip.

"Let's say our prayers and frighten it away," she said stoutly.

"No! no!" said Wan Lee, with a sudden alarm. "No frighten
Spillits! You waitee! Chinee boy he talkee Spillit not to
frighten you."*


* The Chinese pray devoutly to the Evil Spirits NOT to injure them.


Tucking his hands under his blue blouse, Wan Lee suddenly produced
from some mysterious recess of his clothing a quantity of red paper
slips which he scattered at the entrance of the cavern. Then
drawing from the same inexhaustible receptacle certain squibs or
fireworks, he let them off and threw them into the opening. There
they went off with a slight fizz and splutter, a momentary
glittering of small points in the darkness, and a strong smell of
gunpowder. Polly gazed at the spectacle with undisguised awe and
fascination. Hickory and Patsey breathed hard with satisfaction:
it was beyond their wildest dreams of mystery and romance. Even
Wan Lee appeared transfigured into a superior being by the potency
of his own spells. But an unaccountable disturbance of some kind
in the dim interior of the tunnel quickly drew the blood from their
blanched cheeks again. It was a sound like coughing, followed by
something like an oath.

"He's made the Evil Spirit orful sick," said Hickory in a loud
whisper.

A slight laugh, that to the children seemed demoniacal, followed.

"See!" said Wan Lee. "Evil Spillet he likee Chinee; try talkee
him."

The Pirates looked at Wan Lee, not without a certain envy of this
manifest favoritism. A fearful desire to continue their awful
experiments, instead of pursuing their piratical avocations, was
taking possession of them; but Polly, with one of the swift
transitions of childhood, immediately began to extemporize a house
for the party at the mouth of the tunnel, and, with parental
foresight, gathered the fragments of the squibs to build a fire for
supper. That frugal meal, consisting of half a ginger biscuit