"Haggard, H Rider- Queen Sheba's Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haggard H. Rider)

set down the bare and actual truth. In fact, so many rumours are
flying about as to where we have been and what befell us that this has
become almost necessary. As soon as I laid down that cruel column of
gibes and insinuations to which I have alluded--yes, this very
morning, before breakfast, this conviction took hold of me so strongly
that I cabled to Oliver, Captain Oliver Orme, the hero of my history,
if it has any particular hero, who is at present engaged upon what
must be an extremely agreeable journey round the world--asking his
consent. Ten minutes since the answer arrived from Tokyo. Here it is:

"Do what you like and think necessary, but please alter all names, et
cetera, as propose returning via America, and fear interviewers. Japan
jolly place." Then follows some private matter which I need not
insert. Oliver is always extravagant where cablegrams are concerned.

I suppose that before entering on this narration, for the reader's
benefit I had better give some short description of myself.

My name is Richard Adams, and I am the son of a Cumberland yeoman who
married a Welshwoman. Therefore I have Celtic blood in my veins, which
perhaps accounts for my love of roving and other things. I am now an
old man, near the end of my course, I suppose; at any rate, I was
sixty-five last birthday. This is my appearance as I see it in the
glass before me: tall, spare (I don't weigh more than a hundred and
forty pounds--the desert has any superfluous flesh that I ever owned,
my lot having been, like Falstaff, to lard the lean earth, but in a
hot climate); my eyes are brown, my face is long, and I wear a pointed
white beard, which matches the white hair above.

Truth compels me to add that my general appearance, as seen in that
glass which will not lie, reminds me of that of a rather aged goat;
indeed, to be frank, by the natives among whom I have sojourned, and
especially among the Khalifa's people when I was a prisoner there, I
have often been called the White Goat.

Of my very commonplace outward self let this suffice. As for my
record, I am a doctor of the old school. Think of it! When I was a
student at Bart.'s the antiseptic treatment was quite a new thing, and
administered when at all, by help of a kind of engine on wheels, out
of which disinfectants were dispensed with a pump, much as the
advanced gardener sprays a greenhouse to-day.

I succeeded above the average as a student, and in my early time as a
doctor. But in every man's life there happen things which, whatever
excuses may be found for them, would not look particularly well in
cold print (nobody's record, as understood by convention and the
Pharisee, could really stand cold print); also something in my blood
made me its servant. In short, having no strict ties at home, and
desiring to see the world, I wandered far and wide for many years,
earning my living as I went, never, in my experience, a difficult