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

changed the shape of each island, and thrust mud banks in their path.
Driven on by his own eloquence, he leapt to the rail and screamed
defiance into the brooding mangroves until flocks of this rose and
milled in the heat mists above the dhow. Then he flung himself down on
the carpet and fixed Sebastian with a stare of sullen malevolence.

"It's not really my fault, you know." Sebastian wriggled with
embarrassment under the stare. Then once again he produced his
Admiralty chart, spread it on the deck, and placed his finger on the
island which Flynn O'Flynn had ringed in blue pencil as the rendezvous.
"I mean, it is rather your cup of tea, finding the place. After all,
you are the navigator, aren't you?"

The captain spat fiercely on his deck, and Sebastian flushed.

"Now that sort of thing isn't going to get us anywhere.

Let's try and behave like gentlemen."

This time the captain hawked it up from deep down in his throat and
spat a lump of yellow phlegm into the blue pencil circle on Sebastian's
map, then he rose to his feet and stalked away to where his crew
squatted in a group under the poop.

In the short dusk, while the mosquitoes whined in a thin mist about
Sebastian's head, he listened to the Arabic muttering and saw the
glances that were directed at him down the length of the dhow. So when
the night closed over the ship like a bank of black steam, he took up a
defensive position on the foredeck and waited for them to come. As a
weapon he had his cane of solid ebony. He laid it across his lap and
sat against the rail until the darkness was complete, then, silently,
he changed his position and crouched beside one of the water barrels
that was lashed to the base of the mast.

They were a long time coming. Half the night had wasted away before he
heard the stealthy scuff of bare feet on the planking. The absolute
blackness of the night was filled with the din of the swamp; the boom
and tonk of frogs, the muted buzz of insects and the occasional snort
and splash of a hippo, so that Sebastian had difficulty in deciding how
many they had sent against him. Crouching by the water barrel he
strained his eyes unavailingly into the utter blackness and tuned his
hearing to filter out the swamp noises and catch only those soft little
sounds that death made as it came down the deck towards him.

Although Sebastian had never scaled any academic heights, he had boxed
light heavyweight for Rugby, and fast-bowled for Sussex the previous
cricket season when he had led the county bowling averages. So,
although he was afraid now, Sebastian had a sublime confidence in his
own physical prowess and it was not the kind of fear that filled his
belly with oily warmth, nor turned his ego to jelly, but rather, it