"S. M. Stirling - Sea of Time 01 - Island in the Sea of Time 484" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

between the ship's three wheels. Alston bit back a startled
obscenityтАФyou had to set an exampleтАФand shook her hand.
Something white-hot stretched for an instant from sky to sea off
to her left. More sparks flew; people were leaping and cursing all
across the deck. Not the four hands standing on the benchlike
platforms either side of the wheels, she noted with satisfaction.
They flinched, their eyes went wide, but they kept her steady on
the heading they'd been given.

Light flickered from left to right behind her, curving ahead of
the ship in a line only a few hundred yards awayтАФ curving from
east to west, in a line her navigator's eye could see was the arc of
a huge circle. St. Elmo's fire ran along the Eagle's rigging, blue
witch-flame. The curses were turning to screams as the lightning
reared up into a crawling dome of orange and white overhead.
Like being under the biggest, gaudiest salad bowl in the world,
ran through her mind as she stood paralyzed for a moment. Then
the noise on deck penetrated.

Easily. The roaring wind had dropped away to nothing in the
space of a few seconds, and the drumhead-taut sails slackened
and thuttered limp. The motion of the ship lost its purposeful
rolling plunge, changed to a shuddering as the waves turned into
a formless chop, and then to a slow sway as they subsided.
Shouts and screams echoed through an eerie silence as the
rigging's moaning song of cloven air died.

"Silence there!" she snapped, quiet but carrying. "Mr.
Roysins, let's get some order here. Whatever's happening, panic
won't help."
 But it would feel so good, part of her mind gibbered, looking
up at the dome of lights that turned night into shadowless day.

"On with engines," she said. Max the diesel hammered into
life and steerageway came on the ship. "Strike all sails. Give me a
depth-finder reading."

She clenched her hands behind her back and rose slightly on
her toes, ignoring the blasting arch of fire. "We've got a ship to
sail."

"Got the stores covered?" Chief Cofflin asked, as he pushed
through the crowd on Main Street.

"Right, liquor, grocery, and jewelryтАФjust in case. We're
stretched pretty thin."

His assistant hesitated; he was a short thin young man named
George Swain, and a fourth cousin. Everyone on the island was a
cousin, except wash-ashores. It made for a certain lack of