"Monica Hughes - Devil On My Back" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Monica)

Rope, grass... Well, the island was certainly well supplied with grass. In fact, now he looked
more closely he could see that there was the fine stuff that grew inland under the trees, coarse grass
among the brush and brambles, and sedges and reeds that stood by the shore with their roots in the
water. They were by far the longest and should make his job easier.
He girded his toga around his waist and waded into the shallows. The sedges were certainly
strong. When he grasped a handful and pulled, the edges cut the palm of his hands. In the end he learned
to protect his palms with wads of soft inland grass. Before long he had a whole pile of sedge.
He sat down to plait and knot the lengths into the semblance of a rope. Hope began to rise within
him. He worked hard and was startled to notice that the sun had moved to the center of the river and it
was noon.
He coiled the lengths of rope he had made and started to search for straight pieces of wood. He
found most of them on the upstream end of the island, where there was almost a dump of stuff that had
come downriver and been caught by the tangle of wood already there. By evening he had laid out a mat
of wood pieces about two meters long and a meter wide. Then it was too dark to see any more.
In the remaining wisps of twilight he pulled up as much soft grass as he could and piled it in a dry
depression beneath the trees at the center of the island, out of the wind. Then he drank as much water as
he could stomach, wishing it were solid food. He burrowed into his newly made bed.
In his whole life he had never worked as hard as he had done this day, and he fell asleep without
even thinking about it. Later he was awakened by a sound. Had it been a sound? He lay tensely listening.
There it was! Hoo... hoo. A cold and sorrowful sound from a tree close above his head. He could feel
the goose-flesh creep up his arms. He crouched in his grass bed until a pale clumsy shape suddenly
dropped from the tree and flapped off across the dark water.
Later in the night he woke from a dream in which he was gobbling huge mounds of soyburgers,
slabs of soy cheese, dozens of boiled eggs, hectares of vegetables, until his stomach hurt. When he woke
his stomach was still hurting. He folded his hands across its emptiness and at length went back to sleep.
He woke again to a grey pre-dawn world. All the colors seemed to have been drained out of the
landscape and everything looked flat and unreal. A faint mist smoked off the river. It was very quiet.
Even the voice of the river was hushed.
He got up and went to look at his raft. It wasn't bad. He squatted beside it and began to interlace
the pieces of wood with the lengths of grass rope. He worked without looking up until he had a flexible
mat. Would that work? Shouldn't the raft be rigid?
He could tie two or three thick branches at right angles to the others. And he would need
something better than his hand to force the raft across the current to the bank. He set off to look for
suitable wood.
By now the sun was up and the mist was off the water. He passed the bramble thicket and
stopped to search for more berries. There was hardly a berry left. He popped the few he could find into
his mouth and wished he had not been so greedy the day before.
A spoonful of berries wasn't much of a breakfast for a Lord. How long until his next meal? he
thought, as he hauled the wood he had found down to the shore. Then he found he had to make more
rope to fasten the cross members to his raft. By the time he was finished the sun was again touching the
western hills.
"I won't spend another night in this place," he told himself. He had got into the habit of talking out
loud as he worked. It made him feel a little less alone.
He tied his last piece of rope firmly to the raft and fastened the other end to a bush close to
shore. Then he heaved the raft onto its side. It was quite a weight. He gave it a push and it flopped
smack into the water. And it floated! The river caught at it, tugging eagerly. The raft bobbed, held only by
its tether of rope.
Tomi swallowed, The water seemed so smooth and calm on top and yet beneath the surface was
hidden this wild power. Dare he .trust himself to this homemade contraption of wood and sedge?
"It's that or starve to death," he told himself. "Get it over with, while it's still light. Come on."