"Philip Jose Farmer - The Wind Whales Of Ishmael" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

many. But he had agonizing business to press and little time to wonder. And so the Rachel sailed on her
crazy path, looking for the whaling boat containing the captain's little son. The day passed, and the night
rushed over the sea, and lanterns were lighted. The full moon arose and turned the smooth waters to
patches of sable and sparkle.
The coffin-buoy of Queequeg had been raised to the deck, and there Captain Gardiner had
walked around it, eyeing it queerly, examining from time to time the strange carvings on its lid while
Ishmael told his story.
"Aye, I wonder what the heathen savage wrote when he fashioned these," the captain muttered.
"Curious that an unlettered wild man should make these letters. A prayer to one of his Baal-like gods? A
letter to some being he thinks dwells in the otherworld? Or perhaps these form words which, if uttered,
would open the gateway to some clime or time that we Christians would find very uncomfortable indeed."
Ishmael remembered these speculations. In after times he wondered if the captain, with his last
remark, had not struck deep into the lungs of the truth. Were the twisted carvings which began to slide
and melt if looked at too intently the outlines of a key that could turn the tumblers of time?
But Ishmael did not have much time to think. Cap-tain Gardiner, in consideration of the strain
through which he had gone, allowed him to sleep for the rest of the day and half of the night. Then he was
awakened and sent aloft to the head of t'gallant mast to watch and so earn his keep. With the lantern
blazing at his back, he scanned the sea which, having lost all move-ment, lay like quicksilver around the
Rachel. The wind was dead and so boats had been put out ahead of the Rachel to pull her along, and
the only sound was the splashing of the oars as the men strained and an oc-casional grunt from a
sweating sailor. The air seemed as heavy as the sea, and indeed it had assumed a silvery and heavy
shroud. The moon was full, drifting through a cloudless sky as if through a sluggish stream. Suddenly the
hairs on the back of Ishmael's neck, so accustomed these last few days to this reaction, stood on end.
The tips of the yardarms ahead and below seemed to be haunted with the ghosts of fire. And each of the
three-pointed lightning rods seemed to burn. He turned and looked behind him, and the tips of the
yardarms spouted phantom flames.
"St. Elmo's fire!" a cry arose.
Ishmael remembered that other ship and wondered if this, too, were doomed. Had he been
saved only to be killed shortly thereafter?
The men in the boats quit rowing when they saw the giant candles of the elemental fire, but the
officers in the bows of their boats urged them back to their work.
Captain Gardiner shouted up, "Ishmael, my man, do you see any sign of the lost boat?"
"Nay, Captain Gardiner!" Ishmael shouted back down to him, it seeming to him that his breath
made the nearest taper waver as if it were a candle of genuine fire. "Nay, I can see nothing -- as yet!"
But a moment later he started and gripped the nar-row railing before him. Something to the
starboard had moved. It was long and black, and for a moment he thought that it surely must be the boat,
perhaps half a mile away. But he did not cry out, wanting to make sure and so not gladden the captain
only to destroy his happiness. Thirty seconds later, the black object lengthened out, cutting the
mercury-colored sea with furrows of a lighter silver. Now it looked like a sea ser-pent, and it was so
long and slender that he thought it must be that beast of which he had heard much and seen nothing. Or
perhaps it was the tentacle of a kraken surfaced for some reason known only to itself.
But the black snaky thing suddenly disappeared. He rubbed his eyes and wondered if the
exhaustion of the three days' chase of the white whale and the ramming and sinking of the ship and a day
and a night and half a day of floating on top of a coffin had made him forever after subject to disorders of
the brain.
Another lookout cried out then, "A sea snake!"
Other cries arose, even from the men in the towing boats, who were not able to see nearly as far
as the men on the masts.
From every quarter, long thin black things writhed and spun and slid over the black-and-silver
waters. They seemed destined to drive their lancelike heads into the sides of the hull of the Rachel, and