"Dunsany, Lord - collection - Tales of Three Hemispheres" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Title Tales of Three Hemispheres

Author Lord Dunsany





Contents

The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla
How the Office of Postman Fell Vacant in Otford-under-the-Wold
The Prayer of Boob Aheera
East and West
A Pretty Quarrel
How the Gods Avenged Meoul Ki Ning
The Gifts of the Gods
The Sack of Emeralds
The Old Brown Coat
An Archive of Older Mysteries
A City of Wonder


BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW
Publisher's Note
Idle Days on the Yann (see A Dreamer's Tales)
A Shop in Go-by Street
The Avenger of Perdуndaris




THE LAST DREAM OF BWONA KHUBLA
FROM steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchids blow,
where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and fireflies glide about
by night like little moving stars, the travelers went three days through
forests of cactus till they came to the open plains where the oryx are.
And glad they were when they came to the water-hole, where only one white
man had gone before, which the natives know as the camp of Bwona Khubla, and
found the water there.
It lies three days from the nearest other water, and when Bwona Khubla had
gone there three years ago, what with malaria with which he was shaking all
over, and what with disgust at finding the water-hole dry, he had decided to
die there, and in that part of the world such decisions are always fatal. In
any case he was overdue to die, but hitherto his amazing resolution, and
that terrible strength of character that so astounded his porters, had kept
him alive and moved his safari on.
He had had a name no doubt, some common name such as hangs as likely as not
over scores of shops in London; but that had gone long ago, and nothing
identified his memory now to distinguish it from the memories of all the