"Burroughs, Edgar Rice - People That Time Forgot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

seeing the brute spring into the air, turning a complete
somersault; but it was up again almost instantly, though in the
brief second that it took it to scramble to its feet and get
its bearings, it exposed its left side fully toward me, and a
second bullet went crashing through its heart. Down it went
for the second time--and then up and at me. The vitality of
these creatures of Caspak is one of the marvelous features of
this strange world and bespeaks the low nervous organization of
the old paleolithic life which has been so long extinct in
other portions of the world.

I put a third bullet into the beast at three paces, and then I
thought that I was done for; but it rolled over and stopped at
my feet, stone dead. I found that my second bullet had torn
its heart almost completely away, and yet it had lived to
charge ferociously upon me, and but for my third shot would
doubtless have slain me before it finally expired--or as Bowen
Tyler so quaintly puts it, before it knew that it was dead.

With the panther quite evidently conscious of the fact that
dissolution had overtaken it, I turned toward the girl, who was
regarding me with evident admiration and not a little awe,
though I must admit that my rifle claimed quite as much of her
attention as did I. She was quite the most wonderful animal
that I have ever looked upon, and what few of her charms her
apparel hid, it quite effectively succeeded in accentuating.
A bit of soft, undressed leather was caught over her left
shoulder and beneath her right breast, falling upon her left
side to her hip and upon the right to a metal band which
encircled her leg above the knee and to which the lowest point
of the hide was attached. About her waist was a loose leather
belt, to the center of which was attached the scabbard
belonging to her knife. There was a single armlet between her
right shoulder and elbow, and a series of them covered her left
forearm from elbow to wrist. These, I learned later, answered
the purpose of a shield against knife attack when the left arm
is raised in guard across the breast or face.

Her masses of heavy hair were held in place by a broad metal
band which bore a large triangular ornament directly in the
center of her forehead. This ornament appeared to be a huge
turquoise, while the metal of all her ornaments was beaten,
virgin gold, inlaid in intricate design with bits of
mother-of-pearl and tiny pieces of stone of various colors.
From the left shoulder depended a leopard's tail, while her
feet were shod with sturdy little sandals. The knife was her
only weapon. Its blade was of iron, the grip was wound with
hide and protected by a guard of three out-bowing strips of
flat iron, and upon the top of the hilt was a knob of gold.