"Wilbur Smith - Courtney 03 - Blue Horizon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

He snatched up the billy from its sling under the transom. The end of the club was weighted with lead, balanced and heavy in his big right hand. He lifted the fish's head high and swung his weight behind the blow. It caught the fish across the bony ridge above those glaring yellow eyes. The massive body stiffened in death and violent tremors ran down its shimmering sun-red flanks. Then the life went out of it and, white belly uppermost, it floated alongside the skiff with its gill plates open wide as a lady's parasol.

Drenched with sweat and seawater, panting wildly, nursing their torn hands, they leaned on the transom and gazed in awe upon the marvelous creature they had killed. There were no words to express adequately the overpowering emotions of triumph and remorse, of jubilation and melancholy that gripped them now that the ultimate passion of the hunter had come to its climax.

"In the Name of the Prophet, this is Leviathan indeed," Mansur said softly. "He makes me feel so small."

The sharks will be here any minute." Jim broke the spell. "Help me get her on board." They threaded the rope through the fish's gills, then all three hauled on it, the skiff listing dangerously close to the point of capsizing as they brought it over the side. The boat was barely large enough to contain its bulk and there was no room for them to sit on

the thwarts so they perched on the gunwale. A scale had been torn off as the fish slid over the side: it was the size of a gold doubloon and as bright.

Mansur picked it up, and turned it to catch the sunlight, staring at it with fascination. "We must take this fish home to High Weald," he said.

"Why?" Jim asked brusquely.

"To show the family, my father and yours."

"By nightfall he'll have lost his colour, his scales will be dry and dull, and his flesh will start to rot and stink." Jim shook his head. "I want to remember him like this, in all his glory."

"What are we going to do with him then?"

"Sell him to the purser of the VOC ship."

"Such a wonderful creature. Sell him like a sack of potatoes? That seems like sacrilege," Mansur protested.

"I give you of the beasts of the earth and the fish of the sea. Kill! Eat!" Jim quoted. "Genesis. God's very words. How could it be sacrilege?"

"Your God, not mine," Mansur contradicted him.

"He's the same God, yours and mine. We just call him different names."

"He is my God also." Zama was not to be left out. "Kulu Kulu, the Greatest of the Great Ones."

Jim wrapped a strip of cloth round his injured hand. "In the name of Kulu Kulu then. This steenbras is the means to get aboard the Dutch ship. I am going to use it as a letter of introduction to the purser. It's not just one fish I'm going to sell him, it's all the produce from High Weald."

With the north-westerly breeze blowing ten knots behind them they could hoist the single sail, which carried them swiftly into the bay. There were eight ships lying at anchor under the guns of the castle. Most had been there for weeks and were already well provisioned.

Jim pointed out the latest arrival. "They will not have set foot on land for months. They will be famished for fresh food. They are probably riddled with scurvy already." Jim put the tiller over and wove through the anchored shipping. "After what they almost did to us, they owe us a nice bit of profit." All the Courtneys were traders to the core of their being and for even the youngest of them the word 'profit' held almost religious significance. Jim headed for the Dutch ship. It was a tall three decker, twenty guns a side, square-rigged, three masts, big and beamy, obviously an armed trader. She flew the VOC pennant and the flag of the Dutch Republic. As they closed with her Jim could see the storm damage to hull and rigging. Clearly she had endured a rough passage. Closer still, Jim could make out the ship's name on her stern in faded

gilt lettering: Het Gelukkige Meeuw, the Lucky Seagull He grinned at how inappropriately the shabby old lady had been named. Then his green eyes narrowed with surprise and interest.

"Women, by God!" He pointed ahead. "Hundreds of them." Both Mansur and Zama scrambled to their feet, clung to the mast and peered ahead, shading their eyes against the sun.

"You're right!" Mansur exclaimed. Apart from the wives of the burghers, their stolid, heavily chaperoned daughters and the trollops of the waterfront taverns, women were rare at the Cape of Good Hope.

"Look at them," Jim breathed with awe. "Just look at those beauties." Forward of the mainmast the deck was crowded with female shapes.

"How do you know they're beautiful?" Mansur demanded. "We're too far away to tell. They're probably ugly old crones."

"No, God could not be so cruel to us." Jim laughed excitedly. "Every one of them is an angel from heaven. I just know it!"