"Smith, Wilbur - Courtney 01 - Birds Of Prey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

"Avast that tomfoolery. Get you down to my cabin at once.

Hal glanced around the deck, at the flushed, excited faces surrounding him. He shook his head in puzzlement, and looked down at the cutlass in his hand. He opened his fingers and let it drop to the planks. His legs turned to water under him and he sank down on top of Aboli and hugged him as a child hugs his father.

"Aboli!" he whispered, in the language of the forests that the black man had taught him and which was a secret no other white man on the ship shared with them. "I have hurt you sorely. The blood! By my life, I could have killed you Aboli chuckled softly and answered in the same language, "It was past time. At last you have tapped the well of warrior blood. I thought you would never find it. I had to drive you hard to it."

He sat up and pushed Hal away, but there was a new light in his eyes as he looked at the boy, who was a boy no longer. "Go now and do your father's bidding!"

Hal stood up shakily and looked again round the circle of faces, seeing an expression in them that he did not recognize: it was respect mingled with more than a little fear.

"What are you gawking at?" bellowed Ned Tyler. "The play is over. Do you have no work to do? Man those pumps. Those topgallants are luffing. I can find mastheads for all idle hands." There was the thump of bare feet across the deck as the crew rushed guiltily to their duties.

Hal stooped, picked up the cutlass, and handed it back to the boatswain, hilt first.

"Thank you, Ned. I had need of it."

"And you put it to good use. I have never seen that heathen bested, except by your father before you."

Hal tore a handful of rag from the tattered hem of his canvas pantaloons, held it to his ear to staunch the bleeding, and went down to the stern cabin.

Sir Francis looked up from his log-book, his goose quill poised over the page. "Do not look so smug, puppy," he grunted at Hal. "Aboli toyed with you, as he always does. He could have spitted you a dozen times before you turned it with that lucky coup at the end."

When Sir Francis stood up there was hardly room for them both in the tiny cabin. The bulkheads were lined from deck to deck with books, more were stacked about their feet and leather-bound volumes were crammed into the cubby-hole that served his father as a bunk. Hal wondered where he found place to sleep.

His father addressed him in Latin. When they were alone he insisted on speaking the language of the educated and cultivated man. "You will die before you ever make a swordsman, unless you find steel in your heart as well as in your hand. Some hulking Dutchman will cleave you to the teeth at your first encounter." Sir Francis scowled at his son, "Recite the law of the sword."

"An eye for his eyes," Hal mumbled in Latin.

"Speak up, boy!" Sir Francis's hearing had been dulled by the blast of culver ins over the years a thousand broadsides had burst around his head. At the end of an engagement, blood would be seen dripping from the ears of the seamen beside the guns and for days after even the officers on the poop heard heavenly bells ring in their heads.

"An eye for his eyes," Hal repeated roundly, and his father nodded.

"His eyes are the window to his mind. Learn to read in them his intentions before the act. See there the stroke before it is delivered. What else?"

"The other eye for his feet," Hal recited.

"Good." Sir Francis nodded. "His feet will move before his hand.

What else?"

"Keep the point high."

"The cardinal rule. Never lower the point. Keep it aimed at his eyes."

Sir Francis led Hal through the catechism, as he had countless times before. At the end, he said, "Here is one more rule for you. Fight from the first stroke, not just when you are hurt or angry, or you might not survive that first wound."

He glanced up at the hourglass hanging from the deck above his head. "There is yet time for your reading before ship's prayers." He spoke in Latin still. "Take up your Livy and translate from the top of page twenty-six."

For an hour Hal read aloud the history of Rome in the original, translating each verse into English as he went. Then, at last, Sir Francis closed his Livy with a snap. "There is improvement. Now, decline the verb dur are