"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Proteus Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

He stared in hot rage after the deserters until even the white sail had vanished; then he ceased to swear,
sat glumly on the single box they had unloaded, and fell to wondering what had frightened them. But that
was something he never discovered.

Full darkness settled. In the sky appeared the strange constellations of the heaven's under hemisphere;
southeast glowed the glorious Southern Cross, and south the mystic Clouds of Magellan. But Carver had
no eyes for these beauties; he was already long familiar with the aspect of the Southern skies.

He mused over his situation. It was irritating rather than desperate, for he was armed, and even had he
not been, there was no dangerous animal life on these tiny islands south of the Aucklands, nor, excepting
man, on New Zealand itself. But not even man lived in the Aucklands, or on Macquarie, or here on
remote Austin. Malloa and Kolu had been terrifically frightened, beyond doubt; but it took very little to
rouse the superstitious fears of a Polynesian. A strange species of bat was enough, or even a kiwi passing
in the shadows of the brush, or merely their own fancies, stimulated by whatever wild tales had ringed
lonely Austin Island with taboos.

And as for rescue, that too was certain. Malloa and Kolu might recover their courage and return for him.
If they didn't, they still might make for Macquarie Island and the Fortune expedition. Even if they did
what he supposed they naturally would doтАФhead for the Aucklands, and then to their home on the
ChathamsтАФstill Jameson would begin to worry in three or four days, and there'd be a search made.

There was no danger, he told himselfтАФnothing to worry about. Best thing to do was simply to go about
his work. Luckily, the box on which he sat was the one that contained his cyanide jar for insect
specimens, nets, traps, and snares. He could proceed just as planned, except that he'd have to devote
some of his time to hunting and preparing food.

Carver lighted his pipe, set about building a fire of the plentiful driftwood, and prepared for the night. He
delivered himself of a few choice epithets descriptive of the two Maoris as he realized that his
comfortable sleeping bag was gone with the proa, but the fire would serve against the chill of the high
Southern latitude. He puffed his pipe reflectively to its end, lay down near his driftwood blaze, and
prepared to sleep.

When, seven hours and fifty minutes later, the edge of the sun dented the eastern horizon, he was ready
to admit that the night was something other than a success. He was hardened to the tiny, persistent fleas
that skipped out of the sand, and his skin had long been toughened to the bloodthirsty night insects of the
islands. Yet he had made a decided failure at the attempt to sleep.

Why? It surely couldn't be nervousness over the fact of strange surroundings and loneliness. Alan Carver
had spent too many nights in wild and solitary places for that. Yet the night sounds had kept him in a
perpetual state of half-wakeful apprehension, and at least a dozen times he had started to full
consciousness in a sweat of nervousness. Why?

He knew why. It was the night sounds themselves. Not their loudness nor their menace, but theirтАФwell,
their variety. He knew what darkness ought to bring forth in the way of noises; he knew every bird call
and bat squeak indigenous to these islands. But the noises of night here on Austin Island had refused to
conform to his pattern of knowledge. They were strange, unclassified, and far more varied than they
should have been; and yet, even through the wildest cry, he fancied a disturbing note of familiarity.

Carver shrugged. In the clear daylight his memories of the night seemed like foolish and perverse notions,
quite inexcusable in the mind of one as accustomed to lonely places as himself. He heaved his powerful