"Mary Stewart - Wildfire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

"Garsven," said the other passenger, at my elbow. I jumped. Such had been my absorption in the scene,
so great the sense of solitude imposed by these awful hills, that I had forgotten I was not alone.

"I beg your pardon?"

He smiled. I saw now that he was a pleasant-looking man of perhaps thirty, with hair of an unusual dark
gold color, and very blue eyes. He was tall and lightly built, but he looked strong and wiry, and his face was
tanned as if he spent most of his time in the open. He was wearing an ancient ulster over what had, once,
been very good tweeds. "This must be your first visit," he said.

"It is. It's a littleтАФoverpowering, wouldn't you say?"

He laughed. "Decidedly. I know the district like the back of my hand, but they still take my breath away,
every time."

"They?"

"The Cuillin." He gave the word what I imagined must be its local pronunciation. His gaze had moved
beyond me, and I turned to follow it. "Garsven," he said again. "That's the one at the end that sweeps
straight up out of the sea at that impossible angle." His hand came over my shoulder, pointing. "And that's
Sgurr nan Eag; then the big one blotting out the sunтАФthat's the Pointed Peak, Sgurr Biorach."

"You mean Sgurr Alasdair," put in the boatman unexpectedly from behind us. He was a sturdy Skye man
with a dark square face and the soft voice of the Islands. He steered the boat nonchalantly, and now and
then spat to leeward. "Sgurr Alasdair," he said again.

The fair man grinned, and said something in Gaelic which brought an answering grin to the boatman's
face. Then he said to me: "Murdo's right, of course. It's Alasdair on the mapsтАФit was rechristened after
some mountaineer or other; but I like the old names best. Sgurr Biorach it is, and that next to it is Sgurr
Dearg, the Red Peak." His pointing finger swung towards the last towering pinnacle, black against the
sunset. "Sgurr nan Gillean." He dropped his hand and gave me the sort of smile that holds the hint of an
apologyтАФthe Britisher's regret for having displayed an emotion. He said lightly: "And you couldn't have had
your first sight of them under better conditions. Sunset and evening starтАФall the works, in fact, in glorious
Technicolor."

"You must be a mountaineer," I said.

"A climber? Yes, of a sort."

"He's a good man on the hill, is Mr. Grant," said Murdo.

Grant took out cigarettes, offered them to me and Murdo, then spun a spent match into the water. He
said to me: "Have you come for long?"

"A week or ten days. It depends on the weather, If it stays like this, it'll be heaven."
 "It won't," he said confidently. "What d'you say, Murdo?"

The boatman cast a dubious eye at the southwest, where the Atlantic merged its long and glimmering
reaches into a deep blue sky. He jerked a thumb in that direction, and spoke briefly and to the point. "Rain,"
he said.