"Gilman, Carolyn Ives - The Wild Ships Of Fairny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Carolyn Ives)

The stranger was talking again on his old subject of"sheeps." It was clear he
suspected some conspiratorial rose at work around him, for he wheedled them to
reveal all they would. And in a way he was right: for though the uncles would
talk and talk again about the ships of their childhood, they were strangely
reticent about crucial threads of information. There were just some things too
close to the heart for words.

"Havenmaker came from Fairny, you know," Uncle Bosk said. "She was a grand ship,
like a floating fort. She had tall fore- and after castles, all carved with
gilded seadogs. Havenmaker never lost an engagement when she could come
alongside the enemy. The only reason she lost was that the Toms had cannons."

Jumber said good-naturedly to the stranger, "They still think that was
cheating."

"She had eighteen sails," Uncle Stole put in.

"No, seventeen," Bosk said. "I ought to know, it was my great-granduncle who
brought her in."

"Well, my cousin's grandfather sailed in her," Stole maintained, "and she had
nine square sails, seven stay sails, a jib --"

"Right," Bosk said, keeping track on his fingers. "That's seventeen." "-- and a
spritsail."

"Oh yes. I forgot the spritsail."

They could go on all night, debating the details of a hundred bygone ships, and
whose family had delivered each one. But no one in the room seemed bored; even
the stranger was listening attentively. As Larkin scanned their faces, her eyes
kept returning to Runar, standing near the door where the light from one of the
lamps carved sharp lines across his cheekbones and jaw. He didn't see her; he
was too absorbed in what the old men were saying. His weather-browned face was
intense with interest, and a kind of longing. Larkin remembered what Auntie
Broll's dead husband used to say: "That boy was meant to be a shiphunter."

He had been born on the Night of the Naked Bear, and the shadow of it had always
followed him. As a child he had been a dreamer and a loner, Larkin his only real
friend. Even then he had felt the world's injustice more keenly than most. But
lately, moods of black depression had been growing on him. He would leave the
village for weeks on end, tramping out on the hills, living like a bear in the
wind and rain. It had been hard for Larkin to accept that there was nothing she
could do about it. Now, as she watched him listen to the ship-talk, it struck
her that he looked happier than she had seen him in months.

"I helped my brother deliver a ship all the way to Tornabay once, when I was
nineteen," Father Orch was saying. "Her hull was low and sleek as an otter, but
her mainmast nearly scraped the clouds. She had as many acres of sail as most