"Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 of 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

and Vredenburgh -- Mr. Barnard is also very well known in New
Bedford, and has many relations, I am certain, in Edgarton. His son
was named Augustus, and he was nearly two years older than myself. He
had been on a whaling voyage with his father in the John Donaldson,
and was always talking to me of his adventures in the South Pacific
Ocean. I used frequently to go home with him, and remain all day, and
sometimes all night. We occupied the same bed, and he would be sure
to keep me awake until almost light, telling me stories of the
natives of the Island of Tinian, and other places he had visited in
his travels. At last I could not help being interested in what he
said, and by degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. I owned
a sailboat called the Ariel, and worth about seventy-five dollars.
She had a half-deck or cuddy, and was rigged sloop-fashion -- I
forget her tonnage, but she would hold ten persons without much
crowding. In this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the
maddest freaks in the world; and, when I now think of them, it
appears to me a thousand wonders that I am alive to-day.

I will relate one of these adventures by way of introduction to a
longer and more momentous narrative. One night there was a party at
Mr. Barnard's, and both Augustus and myself were not a little
intoxicated toward the close of it. As usual, in such cases, I took
part of his bed in preference to going home. He went to sleep, as I
thought, very quietly (it being near one when the party broke up),
and without saying a word on his favorite topic. It might have been
half an hour from the time of our getting in bed, and I was just
about falling into a doze, when he suddenly started up, and swore
with a terrible oath that he would not go to sleep for any Arthur Pym
in Christendom, when there was so glorious a breeze from the
southwest. I never was so astonished in my life, not knowing what he
intended, and thinking that the wines and liquors he had drunk had
set him entirely beside himself. He proceeded to talk very coolly,
however, saying he knew that I supposed him intoxicated, but that he
was never more sober in his life. He was only tired, he added, of
lying in bed on such a fine night like a dog, and was determined to
get up and dress, and go out on a frolic with the boat. I can hardly
tell what possessed me, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth
than I felt a thrill of the greatest excitement and pleasure, and
thought his mad idea one of the most delightful and most reasonable
things in the world. It was blowing almost a gale, and the weather
was very cold -- it being late in October. I sprang out of bed,
nevertheless, in a kind of ecstasy, and told him I was quite as brave
as himself, and quite as tired as he was of lying in bed like a dog,
and quite as ready for any fun or frolic as any Augustus Barnard in
Nantucket.

We lost no time in getting on our clothes and hurrying down to
the boat. She was lying at the old decayed wharf by the lumber-yard
of Pankey & Co., and almost thumping her side out against the rough
logs. Augustus got into her and bailed her, for she was nearly half