"Mike Resnick - Bully!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Bully!

Mike Resnick
 A DF Books NERDs Release

Copyright ┬й1990 by Mike Resnick

First published in Axolotl Press, 1990

ISBN 1-930936-49-4
 I.

The date was January 8, 1910.
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"At midnight we had stopped at the station of Koba, where we were warmly received
by the district commissioner, and where we met half a dozen of the professional
elephant hunters, who for the most part make their money, at hazard of their lives, by
poaching ivory in the Congo. They are a hard-bit set, these elephant poachers; there
are few careers more adventurous, or fraught with more peril, or which make heavier
demands upon the daring, the endurance, and the physical hardihood of those who
follow them. Elephant hunters face death at every turn, from fever, from the assaults
of warlike native tribes, from their conflicts with their giant quarry; and the unending
strain on their health and strength is tremendous."

тАФTheodore Roosevelt, AFRICAN GAME TRAILS

"...When we were all assembled in my tent and champagne had been served out to
everyone except RooseveltтАФwho insisted on drinking non-intoxicants, though his son
Kermit joined usтАФhe raised his glass and gave the toast тАШTo the Elephant Poachers
of the Lado Enclave.тАЩ As we drank with him one or two of us laughingly protested his
bluntness, so he gravely amended his toast to тАШThe Gentleman Adventurers of Central
Africa', тАШfor,тАЩ he added, тАШthat is the title by which you would have been known in
Queen Elizabeth's time.'

"A real man, with the true outdoor spirit, the ex-President's sympathy with and real
envy of the life we were leading grew visibly as the evening advanced; and he finally
left us with evident reluctance. I, for one, was shaken by the hand three times as he
made for the door on three separate occasions; but each time, after hesitatingly
listening to the beginning of some new adventure by one of the boys, he again sat
down to hear another page from our every-day life. We even urged him to chuck all
his political work and come out like the great white man he was, and join us. If he
would do this, we promised to put a force under his command to organize the hunting
and pioneering business of Central Africa, and perhaps make history. He was, I
believe, deeply moved by this offer; and long afterwards he told a friend that no
honor ever paid him had impressed and tempted him like that which he received from
the poachers of the Lado Enclave."
тАФJohn Boyes, COMPANY OF ADVENTURERS

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