"John Myers Myers - Silverlock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Myers John)

leave me naked in apathy.
When I first saw the chunk of mast I thought it was a shark. The next time I
rode high I saw better what it was, and that broke me down. I had been
resigned to no hope. More than that, I had achieved indifference to the lack.
But seeing something which could help me was more than my loneliness could
bear. I nearly scuttled myself, tightening up and beating the water instead of
stroking cleanly.
It was three combers ahead when I first saw it, then only two. Next I topped
three waves without finding it, shipping water on the third as I became sure
that I had only seen a fish after all. I was in the act of fighting to regain
resignation, when I found myself sliding down a trough directly toward the
thing.
There was a man clinging to it, but my mind had no time for him. That piece
of wood, my hope and my haven, was rising up again, and I felt that I could not
survive the tussle with another wave. With almost the last motion of which I was
capable, I reached out and threw my arm over it.
It might soon have been wrenched away from me, spent as I was, had there
been no one to help. While I feebly clung to the slippery wood, the man I had
noticed was busy. Certain ropes trailed from the spar, and he looped one of
these under
my shoulders. When he had made the free end fast, I could ride in the sling so
formed, with no immediate problem except to keep from being battered by the
mast as the water tossed it and me about.
I had managed a grunt of relief, which he could take for thanks if he wanted
to, but the fellow said nothing until he had reestablished himself on the other
side of our buoy. "You must be as fond of swimming as the Great Silkie
himself."
Without knowing what he was talking about, I could grasp that he spoke
banteringly. Unfit to answer in kind, I peered at him through a veil of spindrift.
His hair, long for a man, lay on his head and clung around his lean face like
tawny seaweed. When the spray thinned, I observed that the big features were
jauntily at odds with one another. The eyes were either gray or blue. It was
hard to tell that late in the day under a cloudy sky.
I tried to say something less obvious, but my brain was geared only for facts.
"The ship I was on sank, so I had to swim."
He nodded. "The one I was on ran afoul of the Maelstrom, but I dove for this
spar and didn't get sucked down with the rest: It's a cylinder, you see."
Again I did not follow him. With a shrug I gazed skyward, trying to calculate
how much daylight remained. As well as I could judge, it was just before or just
after the late sunset of that season. Then I put the inevitable question.
"Do you know whether or not we're drifting toward shore; or if there is any
shore near enough to count?"
"Somewhere off the Commonwealth is the best I can tell you. This is my
second day as flotsam, and I've yet to see any landmarks." He lifted a hand from
the mast in a deprecatory gesture. "I speak figuratively."
It made no difference to me how he spoke, or what he called the country I
would probably never live to put my feet on. Having recovered from the panic
brought on by my efforts to reach the spar, I could view things reasonably. The
chances were that all I had achieved was to prolong my misery. Rescue could
not be hoped for in the sense that it could be expected. If we did not die of