"T. H. White - The Once and Future King" - читать интересную книгу автора (White T.H)

exchange of ideas."
"Ideas!" he exclaimed, reaching for the pokerтАФand they were outside the low door in the twinkling of
an eye, standing in the level rays of sunset on the sandy street, while his anathemas or whatever they
may have been rumbled behind them from the dark interior.
In the street, there were two moth-eaten donkeys searching for weeds in the cracks of a stone wall. Their
legs were tied together so that they could hardly hobble, and their hoofs were cruelly overgrown, so that
they looked like rams' horns or curly skates. The boys commandeered them at once, a new idea
springing fully armed from their heads as soon as they had seen the animals. They would stop hearing
stories or discussing warfare, and they would take the donkeys to the little harbour beyond the sand-
dunes, in case the men who had been out in their currachs should have made a catch. The donkeys would
be useful for carrying the fish.
Gawaine and Gareth took turns with the fat ass, one of them whacking it while the other rode bareback.
The ass gave a hop occasionally, but refused to trot. Agravaine and Gaheris both sat on the thin one, the
former being mounted back to front so that he faced the creature's behindтАФwhich he thrashed furiously
with a thick root of sea-weed. He beat it round the vent, to hurt it more.
It was a strange scene which they presented when they reached the seaтАФthe thin children whose sharp
noses had a drop on the end of each, and their bony wrists which had outgrown their coatsтАФthe donkeys
scampering round in small circles, with an occasional frisk as the tangle bit into their grey quarters. It
was strange because it was circumscribed, because it was concentrated on a single intention. They might
have been a solar system of their own, with nothing else in space, as they went round and round among
the dunes and coarse grass of the estuary. Probably the planets have few ideas in their heads, either.
The idea which the children had was to hurt the donkeys. Nobody had told them that it was cruel to hurt
them, but then, nobody had told the donkeys either. On the rim of the world they knew too much about
cruelty to be surprised by it. So the small circus was a unityтАФthe beasts reluctant to move and the
children vigorous to move them, the two parties bound together by the link of pain to which they both
agreed without question. The pain itself was so much a matter of course that it had vanished out of the
picture, as if by a process of cancellation. The animals did not seem to be suffering, and the children did
not seem to be enjoying the suffering. The only difference was that the boys were violently animated
while the donkeys were as static as possible.

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Into this Eden-like scene, and almost before the memory of Mother Morlan's interior had faded from
their minds, there came a magic barge from over the water, a barge draped with white samite, mystic,
wonderful, and it made a music of its own accord as its keel passed through the waves. Inside it there
were three knights and a seasick brachet. Anything less suitable than these to the tradition of the Gaelic
world, it would have been impossible to imagine.
"I say," said the voice of one of the knights in the barge, while they were still far out, "there is a castle,
isn't it, what? I say, isn't it a pretty one!"
"Stop joggin' the boat, my dear fellow," said the second, "or you will have us in the sea."
King Pellinore's enthusiasm evaporated at the rebuke, and he startled the petrified children by bursting
into tears. They could hear his sobs, mingling with the lapping of the waves and with the music of the
boat, as it drew near.
"Oh, sea!" he said. "I wish I was in you, what? I wish I was full of five fathoms, that I do. Woe, woe, oh,
woe!"
"It is no good saying Whoa, old boy. The thing will whoa when it wants to. It is a magic 'un."
"I was not saying Whoa," retorted the King. "I was saying Woe."
"Well, it won't whoa."