"Smith, Wilbur - Shout At The Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

SHOUT AT THE DEVIL [047-011-4.8]

By: WILBUR SMITH

Category: fiction military

Synopsis:

"Now the seas -were more awesome in their raging,
Each mountain of glassy grey rose high above the raft, shielding it for
a few -seconds from the Whip of the wind, its crest blowing off like
the plume of an Etruscan helmet, before it slid down, collapsing upon
itself in the tumbling roar of breaking water.."

In German East Africa on the eve of the First World War. two free
booting adventurers, one a flamboyant Irish American, the other an
impeccable young Englishman pit their wits against the gross German
Commissioner from whose territory they are making their living as
hunters and ivory poachers. But the outbreak of war gives the signal
for their private skirmish to flare into a relentless vendetta pursued
with devastating violence by land and sea. What begins as a comic
escapade gives way to chilling horror.


PART ONE

Flynn Patrick O'Flynn was an ivory poacher by profession, and modestly
he admitted that he was the best on the east coast of Africa.

Rachid El Keb was an exporter of precious stones, of women for the
harems and great houses of Arabia and India, and of illicit ivory. This
he admitted only to his trusted clients; to the rest he was a rich and
respectable owner of coastal shipping.

In an afternoon during the monsoon of 1912, drawn together by their
mutual interest in pachyderms, Flynn and Rachid sat in the back room of
El Keb's shop in the Arab quarter of Zanzibar, and drank tea from tiny
brass thimbles.

The hot tea made Flynn O'Flynn perspire even more than usual. It was
so humid hot in the room that the flies sat in languid stupor upon the
low ceiling.

"Listen, Kebby, you lend me just one of those stinking little ships of
yours and I'll fill her so high with tusks, she'll damn nigh sink."

"Ah!" replied El Keb carefully, and went on waving the palm-leaf fan
in his own face a face that resembled that of a suspicious parrot with
a straggly, goatee beard.