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

then to evaporate. At first there were only a dozen; then there were two dozen and soon there were
several hundred.
"What are they?" Captain Gardiner shouted.
"I do not know, Captain, but I don't particularly care for them!" the second mate shouted back.
 "Are they interfering with your rowing?" the captain said.
"Only to the extent that the men cannot keep their mind on their work!"
"They may do what they wish with their minds!" Captain Gardiner bellowed. "But their backs
belong to me! Bend to your oars, men! Whatever those things are, they cannot hurt you any more than
the corpo-sants!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" the second mate called back, though not cheerily. "All right, men, you heard the
captain! Dig in your blades and pull! Pay no attention to those mirages! Ah, that is what they are, mirages
of the sea! Phantoms, reflections of things that don't exist! Or, if they do, so far away they can't hurt
you!"
The dip of the oars and the grunting of the men was heard again over the still waters and still air.
But now the serpentine "mirages" began to circle, as if they were trying to catch up with their own tails
and swallow them. Around and around they went, cutting deeper and brighter furrows in the sea, or
seeming to do so. And the corposants, the St. Elmo's fire, on the tips of the yardarms and the trines of
the lightning rods, seemed to burn more fiercely. They were no longer phantoms but living creatures
whose breath was hot.
Ishmael moved away from them, pressing his legs and stomach against the hard railing and
looking straight ahead, not wanting to look directly at either of the flames which flanked him.
There was a shriek from below, and a man ran into a hatch as a flame twice as tall as a man, and
bifur-cated, capered after him.
At the same time, the forward tips of the long black circling objects in the sea spouted St. Elmo's
fire. They were like those snaky whales of prehistoric times, the fathers of the present-day round
monsters, blowing out spouts of flaming brimstone.
Ishmael looked to left and right and saw that the tapers at each tip of the yardarm had split and
that one of each pair was dancing along the yardarm to-ward him.
Ishmael grabbed the railing and closed his eyes tightly.
The captain shouted, "Lord have mercy on us! The sea has come alive, and the ship is burning!"
Ishmael dared not open his eyes but he also dared not remain in ignorance of what was
happening. He saw that the ocean surface was a maze of whirling broken circles of black with a flaming
jet at each end. The ship itself, at every point where any object pro-jected upward more than several
inches, was crowned with a flame which no longer danced but gyrated. Around and around the flames
whirled. And the cor-posants which had been doing the minuet toward him had leaped while his eyes
were closed and fused di-rectly above his head. He could not see all of them, because they leaned when
he bent his head to look at them and so most of their "body" -- if they could be said to have a "body" --
stayed out of reach of his eyes, But enough light shone from them so that he could see their outer surface,
and he knew a moment later, on looking down at the officers and crew, that the corposants were gyrating
on top of his head, a slender toe of fire al-most touching the crown of his head.
The dark circling things on the ocean had joined and formed a writhing spiderweb. Illuminated by
the thou-sands of coldly burning tapers at the corners where the snakes had joined, the sea looked like a
cracked mirror.
Ishmael felt that the world was indeed cracking and that the pieces would fall on his head any
moment.
It was a terrifying feeling, one that drove him to pray out loud, which even the events of the last
three days on the Pequod had not made him do.
The flames went out.
The black web disappeared.
There was utter silence.