"A. E. Merritt - The Moon Pool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

The distant patch of light quivered and shook. The clouds thickened again and it
was gone. The ship raced on southward, swiftly.
Throckmartin dropped into his chair. He lighted a cigarette with a hand that
trembled; then turned to me with abrupt resolution.
"Goodwin," he said. "I do need help. If ever man needed it, I do. GoodwinЧcan
you imagine yourself in another world, alien, unfamiliar, a world of terror,
whose unknown joy is its greatest terror of all; you all alone there, a
stranger! As such a man would need help, so I needЧЧ"
He paused abruptly and arose; the cigarette dropped from his fingers. The moon
had again broken through the clouds, and this time much nearer. Not a mile away
was the patch of light that it threw upon the waves. Back of it, to the rim of
the sea was a lane of moonlight; a gigantic gleaming serpent racing over the
edge of the world straight and surely toward the ship.
Throckmartin stiffened to it as a pointer does to a hidden covey. To me from him
pulsed a thrill of horrorЧbut horror tinged with an unfamiliar, an infernal joy.
It came to me and passed awayЧleaving me trembling with its shock of bitter
sweet.
He bent forward, all his soul in his eyes. The moon path swept closer, closer
still. It was now less than half a mile away. From it the ship fledЧalmost as
though pursued. Down upon it, swift and straight, a radiant torrent cleaving the
waves, raced the moon stream.
"Good God!" breathed Throckmartin, and if ever the words were a prayer and an
invocation they were.
And then, for the first timeЧI sawЧit!
The moon path stretched to the horizon and was bordered by darkness. It was as
though the clouds above had been parted to form a laneЧdrawn aside like curtains
or as the waters of the Red Sea were held back to let the hosts of Israel
through. On each side of the stream was the black shadow cast by the folds of
the high canopies And straight as a road between the opaque walls gleamed,
shimmered, and danced the shining, racing, rapids of the moonlight.
Far, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of silver fire I sensed,
rather than saw, something coming. It drew first into sight as a deeper glow
within the light. On and on it swept toward usЧan opalescent mistiness that sped
with the suggestion of some winged creature in arrowed flight. Dimly there crept
into my mind memory of the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of BuddhaЧthe
Akla bird whose feathers are woven of the moon rays, whose heart is a living
opal, whose wings in flight echo the crystal clear music of the white starsЧbut
whose beak is of frozen flame and shreds the souls of unbelievers.
Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent tinklingsЧlike
pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear; diamonds melting into sounds!
Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path; close up to the barrier of
darkness still between the ship and the sparkling head of the moon stream. Now
it beat up against that barrier as a bird against the bars of its cage. It
whirled with shimmering plumes, with swirls of lacy light, with spirals of
living vapour. It held within it odd, unfamiliar gleams as of shifting
mother-of-pearl. Coruscations and glittering atoms drifted through it as though
it drew them from the rays that bathed it.
Nearer and nearer it came, borne on the sparkling waves, and ever thinner shrank
the protecting wall of shadow between it and us. Within the mistiness was a
core, a nucleus of intenser lightЧveined, opaline, effulgent, intensely alive.