"Oswald Bastable - 01 - The Warlord Of The Air" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

THE WARLORD OF THE AIR
by Michael Moorcock

v1.0

BOOK ONE

HOW AN ENGLISH ARMY OFFICER ENTERED THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE AND WHAT HE SAW
THERE

CHAPTER I The Opium Eater of Rowe Island

IN THE SPRING of 1903, on the advice of my physician, I had occasion to visit
that remote and beautiful fragment of land in the middle of the Indian Ocean
which I shall call Rowe Island. I had been overworking and had contracted what
the quacks now like to term 'exhaustion' or even 'nervous debility'. In other
words I was completely whacked out and needed a rest a long way away from
anywhere. I had a small interest in the mining company which is the sole
industry of the island (unless you count Religion!) and I knew that its climate
was ideal, as was its location-one of the healthiest places in the world and
fifteen hundred miles from any form of civilisation. So I purchased my ticket,
packed my boxes, bade farewell to my nearest and dearest, and boarded the liner
which would take me to Jakarta. From Jakarta, after a pleasant and uneventful
voyage, I took one of the company boats to Rowe Island. I had managed the
journey in less than a month.

Rowe Island has no business to be where it is. There is nothing near it. There
is nothing to indicate that it is there. You come upon it suddenly, rising out
of the water like the tip of some vast underwater mountain (which, in fact, it
is). It is a great wedge of volcanic rock surrounded by a shimmering sea which
resembles burnished metal when it is still or boiling silver and molten steel
when it is testy. The rock is about twelve miles long by five miles across and
is thickly wooded in places, bare and severe in other parts. Everything goes
uphill until it reaches the top and then, on the other side of the hill, the
rock simply falls away, down and down into the sea a thousand feet below.

Built around the harbour is a largish town which, as you approach it, resembles
nothing so much as a prosperous Devon fishing village-until you see the Malay
and Chinese buildings behind the facades of the hotels and offices which line
the quayside. There is room in the harbour for several good sized steamers and a
number of sailing vessels, principally native dhows and junks which are used for
fishing. Further up the hill you can see the workings of the mines which employ
the greatest part of the population which is Malay and Chinese labourers and
their wives and families. Prominent on the quayside are the warehouses and
offices of the Welland Rock Phosphate Mining Company and the great white and
gold facade of the Royal Habour Hotel of which the proprietor is one Minheer
Olmeijer, a Dutchman from Surabaya. There are also an almost ungodly number of
missions, Buddhist temples, Malay mosques and shrines of more, mysterious
origin. There are several less ornate hotels than Olmeijer's, there are general
stores, sheds and buildings which serve the tiny railway which brings the ore