"Michael Moorcock - Oswald Bastable 1 - The Warlord of the Ai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

I hailed him with my cane.

"Any mail?" I called.

"Mail? Mail?" He offered me a look of hatred and contempt which I took for a negative reply to my
question. Then he rushed back up the gangplank and disappeared. I waited, however, in the hope of
seeing the captain and confirming with him that there was, indeed, no mail. Then I saw a white man
appear at the top of the gangplank, pausing and staring blankly around him as if he had not
expected to find land on the other side of the rail at all. Someone gave him a shove from behind
and he staggered down the bouncing plank, fell at the bottom and picked himself up in time to
catch the small seabag which the mate threw to him from the ship.

The man was dressed in a filthy linen suit, had no hat, no shirt. He was unshaven and there were
native sandles on his feet. I had seen his type before. Some wretch whom the East had ruined, who
had discovered a weakness within himself which he might never have found if he had stayed safely
at home in England. As he straightened up, however, I was startled by an expression of intense
misery in his eyes, a certain dignity of bearing which was not at all common in the type. He
shouldered his bag and began to make his way towards the town.

"And don't try to get back aboard, mister, or the law will have you next time!" screamed the mate
of the Maria Carlson after him. The down-and-out hardly seemed to hear. He continued to plod along
the quayside, jostled by the coolies, frantic for work.

The mate saw me and gesticulated impatiently. "No mail. No mail."

I decided to believe him, but called: "Who is that chap? What's he done?"

"Stowaway," was the curt reply.

I wondered why anyone should want to stow away on a ship bound for Rowe Island and on impulse I
turned and followed the man. For some reason I believed him to be no ordinary derelict and he had
piqued my curiosity. Besides, my boredom was so great that I should have welcomed any relief from


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it. Also I was sure that there was something different about his eyes and his bearing and that, if
I could encourage him to confide in me, he would have an interesting story to tell Perhaps I felt
sorry for him, too. Whatever the reason, I hastened to catch him up and address him.

"Don't be offended," I said, "but you look to me as if you could make some use of a square meal
and maybe a drink."

"Drink?"

He turned those strange, tormented eyes on me as if he had recognised me as the Devil himself.
"Drink?"

"You look all up, old chap." I could hardly bear to look into that face, so great was the agony I