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

And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way Tom could
come into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a
little hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps
that was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own
learning and his own natural smartness. We talked and talked it over
together, but couldn't make out how he done it. He had the best head on
him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself
equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would 'a' crowded
either of THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn't
nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on it as
easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels.
We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt
around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as they
would keep till Jim could tan them.


Chapter XI. THE SAND-STORM


WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full
moon was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a
string of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You
could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It
was another caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it,
just to have company, though it warn't going our way. It was a rattler,
that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun
come a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the
camels on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-longlegses marching in
procession. We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than
to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans. It
was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. Some
of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall,
and they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock the man
that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner considerable, I bet
you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't nowheres with them
for speed.
The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started
again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look
very curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, and
after that it begun to look like a bloodred ball, and the air got hot and
close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and looked
thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful-like it looks through a piece of
red glass, you know. We looked down and see a big confusion going on in
the caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was scared; and then
they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there perfectly still.
Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide
wall, and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it
was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us, and
then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our faces
and sting like fire, and Tom sung out: