"Smith, Wilbur - Courtney 03 - A Sparrow Falls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

and some deeper inexplicable insight.

in the light of the flare his eyes flickered across the face of the
older Sergeant. MacDonald had the bony undernourished features of the
slum-dweller, the eyes too close set, the lips narrow and twisted
downwards at the corners.

There was nothing to interest Sean there and he looked at the other man.

The eyes were a pale golden brown, set wide, with the serene gaze of a
poet or a man who had lived in the open country of long distant
horizons. The lids were held wide open, so that they did not overlap
the iris, leaving a clear glimpse of the clean white about the cornea so
that it floated free like a full moon. Sean had seen it only a few
times before, and the effect was almost hypnotic, of such direct and
searching candour that it seemed to reach deep into Sean's own soul.

After the first impact of those eyes, other impressions crowded in. The
first was of the man's extreme youth. He was nearer seventeen than
twenty, Sean judged, and then saw immediately how finely drawn the boy
was. Despite the serenity of his gaze, he was stretched out tight and
hard, racked up with strain close to the snapping point.

Sean had seen it so often in the past four years. They had found this
child's special talent and exploited it ruthlessly, all of them,
Caithness at 3rd Battalion, the ferrety MacDonald, Charles, Dicky and,
by association, himself. They had worked him mercilessly, sending him
out time and again.

The boy held a steaming tin mug of coffee in one hand, and the wrist
that protruded from the sleeve of his coat was skeletal, and speckled
with angry red bites of body lice.

The neck was too long and thin for the head it supported, and the cheeks
were hollow, the eye-sockets sunken. This is General Courtney, said the
Captain; and as the light of the flare died, Sean saw the eyes shine
suddenly with anew light, and heard the boy's breath catch with awe.
Hello, Anders, I've heard a lot about you, And I've heard about you,
sir. The transparent tones of hero-worship irritated Sean. The boy
would have heard all the stories, of course. The regiment boasted of
him, and every new recruit heard the tales. There was nothing he could
do to prevent them circulating. It's a great honour to meet you, sir.
The boy tripped on the words, stuttering a little, another sign of the
terrible strain he was under, -yet the words were completely sincere.

The legendary Sean Courtney, the man who had made five million pounds on
the goldfields of the Witwatersrand and lost every penny of it in a
morning at a single coup of fortune. Sean Courtney, who had chased the
Boer General Leroux across half of Southern Africa and caught him at
last after a terrible hand-to-hand fight. The soldier who had held