"Follett, Ken - The Key to Rebecca" - читать интересную книгу автора (Follett Ken)

gent men were, even the nomads who lived all their lives here. But he
never allowed that fear to take hold of him, to panic him, to use up his
liervous energy. There were always catastrophes: mistakes in navigation
that made you miss a well by a couple of miles; water bottles that leaked
or burst; apparently healthy camels that got sick a couple of days out.
The only response was to say Inshallah: It is the will of God.
Eventually the sun began to dip toward the west. He looked at the camel's
load, wondering how much of it he could carry. There were three small
European suitcases, two heavy and one light, all important. There was a
little bag of clothes, a sextant, the maps, the food and the water
bottle. It
 THE KEY TO REBECCA 5

was already too much: he would have to abandon the tent, the tea set, the
cooking pot, the almanac and the saddle.
He made the three cases into a bundle and tied the clothes, the food and
the sextant on top, strapping the lot together with a length of cloth.
He could put his arms through the cloth straps and carry the load like
a rucksack on his back. He slung the goatskin water bag around his neck
and let it dangle in front.
It was a heavy load.
Three months earlier he would have been able to carry it all day then
play tennis in the evening, for he was a strong man; but the desert had
weakened him. His bowels were water, his skin was a mass of sores, and
he had lost twenty or thirty pounds. Without the camel he could not go
far.
Holding his compan in his hand, he started walking.
He followed the compass wherever it led, resisting the temptation to
divert around the hills, for he was navigating by dead reckoning over the
final miles, and a fractional error could take him a fatal few hundred
yards astray. He settled into a slow, long-strided waUL His mind emptied
of hopes and fears and he concentrated on the compass and the sand. He
managed to forget the pain of his ravaged body and put one foot in front
of the other automatically, without thought and therefore without effort.
The day cooled into everung. The water bottle became lighter around his
neck as he consumed its contents. He refused to think about how much
water was left: he was drinking six pints a day, he had calculated, and
he knew there was not enough for another day. A flock of birds flew over
his head, whistling noisily. He looked up, shading his eyes with his
hand, and recognized them as 11chtenstein7s sandgrouse, desert birds,
like brown pigeons that flocked to water every morning and evening. They
were heading the same way as he was, which meant he was on the right
track, but he knew they could fly fifty miles to water, so he could take
little encouragement from them.
Clouds gathered on the horizon as the desert cooled. Be. hind him, the
San Bank lower and turned into a big yellow balloon. A little later a
white moon appeared in a purple sky.
He thought about stopping. Nobody could walk all night. But he had no
tent, no blanket, no rice and no tea. And he
 6 Ken Follett