"Smith, Wilbur - The Eye of the Tiger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

The Eye Of The Tiger [047-142-066-4.9]

By: Wilbur Smith

Category: Fiction Historical Adventure

Synopsis:

Harry Fletcher, a man with a chequered past, now makes an honest living
as a charter skipper fishing in the magnificent Indian Ocean. Until
suddenly men from a world he has put behind him plunge him once more
into a deadly game. And he must play - for an unknown prize against
undeclared odds - by the rules of violence and death which he once
practised as an art. For of one thing he is certain: to fail is to die....

Last printing: 05/28/02
`;2:+' ISBN: 0-2670-107-8366-1
"TIGER! TIGER! burning bright In the forests of the night ...
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes?"
William Blake

It was one of those seasons when the fish came late.

I worked my boat and crew hard, running far northwards each day, coming
back into Grand Harbour long after dark each night, but it was November
the 6th when we picked up the first of the big ones riding down on the
wine purple swells of the Mozambique current.

By this time I was desperate for a fish. My charter was a party of one,
an advertising wheel from New York named Chuck Mcgeorge, one of my
regulars who made the annual six-thousand-mile pilgrimage to St. Mary's
island for the big marlin. He was a short wiry little man, bald as an
ostrich egg and grey at the temples, with a wizened brown monkey face
but the good hard legs that are necessary to take on the big fish.

When at last we saw the fish, he was riding high in the water, showing
the full length of his fin, longer than a man's arm and with the
scimitar curve that distinguishes it from shark or porpoise.

Angelo spotted him at the instant that I did, and he hung out on the
foredeck stay and yelled with excitement, his gipsy curls dangling on
his dark cheeks and his teeth flashing in the brilliant tropical
sunlight.

The fish crested and wallowed, the water opening about him so that he
looked like a forest log, black and heavy and massive, his tail fin
echoing the graceful curve of the dorsal, before he slid down into the
next trough and the water closed over his broad glistening back.

I turned and glared down into the cockpit. Chubby was already helping