"Conrad, Joseph - Almayer's Folly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

Mr. Vinck solemnly, with his head on one side, "lots of money;
more than Hudig!" And after a pause--just to let his hearers
recover from their astonishment at such an incredible assertion--
he would add in an explanatory whisper, "You know, he has
discovered a river."

That was it! He had discovered a river! That was the fact
placing old Lingard so much above the common crowd of sea-going
adventurers who traded with Hudig in the daytime and drank
champagne, gambled, sang noisy songs, and made love to half-caste
girls under the broad verandah of the Sunda Hotel at night. Into
that river, whose entrances himself only knew, Lingard used to
take his assorted cargo of Manchester goods, brass gongs, rifles
and gunpowder. His brig Flash, which he commanded himself, would
on those occasions disappear quietly during the night from the
roadstead while his companions were sleeping off the effects of
the midnight carouse, Lingard seeing them drunk under the table
before going on board, himself unaffected by any amount of
liquor. Many tried to follow him and find that land of plenty
for gutta-percha and rattans, pearl shells and birds' nests, wax
and gum-dammar, but the little Flash could outsail every craft in
those seas. A few of them came to grief on hidden sandbanks and
coral reefs, losing their all and barely escaping with life from
the cruel grip of this sunny and smiling sea; others got
discouraged; and for many years the green and peaceful-looking
islands guarding the entrances to the promised land kept their
secret with all the merciless serenity of tropical nature. And
so Lingard came and went on his secret or open expeditions,
becoming a hero in Almayer's eyes by the boldness and enormous
profits of his ventures, seeming to Almayer a very great man
indeed as he saw him marching up the warehouse, grunting a "how
are you?" to Vinck, or greeting Hudig, the Master, with a
boisterous "Hallo, old pirate! Alive yet?" as a preliminary to
transacting business behind the little green door. Often of an
evening, in the silence of the then deserted warehouse, Almayer
putting away his papers before driving home with Mr. Vinck, in
whose household he lived, would pause listening to the noise of a
hot discussion in the private office, would hear the deep and
monotonous growl of the Master, and the roared-out interruptions
of Lingard--two mastiffs fighting over a marrowy bone. But to
Almayer's ears it sounded like a quarrel of Titans--a battle of
the gods.

After a year or so Lingard, having been brought often in contact
with Almayer in the course of business, took a sudden and, to the
onlookers, a rather inexplicable fancy to the young man. He sang
his praises, late at night, over a convivial glass to his cronies
in the Sunda Hotel, and one fine morning electrified Vinck by
declaring that he must have "that young fellow for a supercargo.
Kind of captain's clerk. Do all my quill-driving for me." Hudig