"H. Warner Munn - The Ship from Atlantis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Munn H Warner)

called "The Cloak of the Wind" with its winged serpent in red and green,
ramping ready to strike. As the wind took it, the oars lashed the water and
the ship picked up a bone in its teeth and borne by the stream went down
to meet the rollers of the Gulf.

Ventidius and his wife stood watching as the ship grew small in
distance. There was no sound from the crowd. For once, even the children
were quiet, sensing the moment. There was a fleck of color far away. Was
it a glint of sunlight upon an oar blade or a gleam upon a wave? A seagull's
veering wing as it plunged into the water or the flicker of the dragon's
movable tongue? No one could be sure, but it was gone.

They turned from the shore and went back through the waiting crowd,
Ventidius' arm now about his wife, who walked leaning unashamedly
against him, her eyes half closed, but dry.

Two men stepped out of the throng and walked beside them, without
speaking: Garno-go-a-da-we, Man Who Burns Hair, the mighty emissary
from the People of the Flint, and Ha-yon-wa-tha, Royaneh of the
Onondaga.

Ventidius looked up from the ground and saw them and his face
worked. Gold-Flower-of-Day smiled, reached out and touched them
affectionately. "Old friends, dear friends тАФalways there when we have
needed you. Now that we are two again, we need you most of all."

Ventidius bent and kissed her. "Nay, dear one, we will always be three.
Amavimus. Amamus. Amabimus. We have loved. We love. We shall love.
We cannot know what he will find at the end of his journey. At the end of
mine, I found you."

And the little group passed on, through the crowd, toward their own
quarters; and the feasting began again.

Once out of the muddy channels of the Misconzebe delta, the
dragon-ship turned eastward. The wind lay fair behind and the sail
strained away from the mast. There were small islands and shoals to avoid
and other river mouths to discharge trees and floating debris. As their way
lay coastwise for some while Gwalchmai gave the tiller into the hands of
the steersman and directed him to hold away from the shore. So they
sailed for a long day's run, keeping the distant greenery just visible to their
left.

At evening they bore in under oars and beached upon a coral strand in
a pleasant cove. A rill of sweet water emptied here into the sea and tracks
dimpled deep into the mud tokened that this was a favorite watering place
for deer. While some of the crew sought for oysters, mussels and crabs,
others took their hunting gear from their chests under the rowing benches
and slipped into the forest. It was not long before venison was roasting
over a bed of driftwood coals which shimmered with heat and color.