"Smith, Wilbur - Ballantyne 02 - Men of Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

each day the disturbance caused by their metal tools set up faint
vibrations within the rock that had been dormant so long; and each day
those vibrations were stronger, as the layer between it and the surface
shrank from two hundred feet to a hundred and then to fifty, from ten
feet to two, until now only inches separated the crystal from the
brilliant sunlight which would at last bring to life its slumbering
fires.

Major Morris Zouga Ballantyne stood on the lip of the aerial rope-way
high above the deep circular chasm where once a small hillock had risen
above the flat and dreary landscape of the African continental shield.

Even in the fierce heat he wore a silk scarf at his throat, the tail of
which'was tucked into the buttoned front of his flannel shirt. Though
recently washed and pressed with a heated stroking-iron, his shirt was
indelibly stained to a dull reddish ochre colour.

It was the pigment of the African earth, red earth, almost like raw
meat, where the iron-shod wheels of the wagons had cut it or the shovels
of the diggers had turned the surface. Earth that rose in dense red dust
clouds when the hot dry winds scoured it, or turned to bleeding
glutinous red mud when the thunderstorms thrashed its surface.

Red was the colour of the diggings. It stained the hair of dogs and
beasts of burden, it stained the clothing of the men and their beards
and the skin of their arms, it stained their canvas tents and coated the
corrugated iron shanties of the settlement.

Only in the gaping hole below where Zouga stood was the colour altered
to the soft yellow of a thrush's breast.

The hole was almost a mile across, the rim of it nearly a perfect
circle, and its bottom already two hundred feet deep in places. The men
working down there were tiny insect-like figures, spiders perhaps, for
only spiders could have spun the vast web that glittered in a silvery
cloud over the entire excavation.

Zouga paused a moment to lift the wide-brimmed hat, its pointed peak
stained by his own sweat and the blown red dust. Carefully he mopped the
beads of sweat from the smooth paler skin along his hairline, and then
inspected the damp red stain on the silk bandanna and grimaced with
distaste.

His dense curling hair had been protected by the hat from the fierce
African sunlight and was still the colour of smoked wild honey, but his
beard had been bleached to pale gold and the years had laced it with
silver strands.

His skin was dark also, baked like a crust of new bread, only the scar
on his cheek was porcelain white where the elephant gun had burst so