"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer Abroad (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to
die, 'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I
wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does."
He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because
I knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so
then I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off
and go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant
superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of these
days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it for a
while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that knows about
ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they are.
So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being scared, and Tom busy.
By and by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:
"NOW get up and look, you sapheads."
We done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us!-clear,
and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest
sight that ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and
shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so
peaceful and comfortable-enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful.
Jim DID cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out
of his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but
Tom and Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a lot,
and I've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that ever
begun with that water.
Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me,
and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a
foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good
time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to
evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in
school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them
when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness
around.
"Lions a-comin'!-lions! Quick, Mars Tom! Jump for yo' life, Huck!"
Oh, and didn't we! We never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the
ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off-he always done it whenever
he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the ladder up
from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he turned on a
raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky before
he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he was doing. Then
he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next; so there we was,
so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was drifting off on the
wind.
But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her
down, and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a
camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I was
too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and
things?
But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped
down to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over
the center, and sung out: