"Woods, Stuart - White Cargo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Woods Stuart)

jacket.

"What is it. Cat? What's wrong?" his wife demanded.

"What's going on. Daddy?" Jinx yelled, wide-eyed.

He was pleased that, in her excitement. Jinx had forgotten to call him
Cat. When she addressed him as an equal, it reminded him she was growing
up--had grown up.

"Right over there," he said, pointing at the smudge.

Both women squinted at the horizon, shielding their eyes from the sun,
which was now just above the horizon, big and hot.

"What is it?" Jinx demanded.

"I can only see sort of a smudge."

"That's South America, kid," he replied.

"Never let it be said your old man didn't show you South America."

She turned to him, a look of astonished disgust spreading over her face.

"You mean you got me out of the sack for that?" She turned to her mother
and shrugged, spreading her hands.

"For Christ's sake. Cat," his wife said, "I thought we were sinking."

Both women turned back toward the companionway.

"Hey, wait a minute, guys," Cat said, thrusting the chart toward them,
"that smudge is the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a little mountain
range that goes up to nearly nineteen thousand feet; that's the La
Guajira Peninsula of Colombia out there; just south of it is the fabled
Venezuelan port of Maracaibo. Doesn't that name send a chill right
through you?"

"It sends a yawn right through me," Jinx said, yawning.

"No, wait a minute, kitten," Katie said to her daughter.

"Look at it through the glasses. Your father didn't bring us all this
way to miss this sort of thing."

Jinx took the binoculars and looked through them at the smudge.

"Gee," she said, flatly, "you're right, it's a mountain.