"William Morris - The Wood Beyond the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris William)

 CHAPTER II

GOLDEN WALTER TAKES SHIP TO SAIL THE SEAS


When Walter went down to the Katherine next morning, there was the skipper Geoffrey, who did
him reverence, and made him all cheer, and showed him his room aboard ship, and the plenteous
goods which his father had sent down to the quays already, such haste as he had made. Walter
thanked his father’s love in his heart, but otherwise took little heed to his affairs, but wore away
the time about the haven, gazing listlessly on the ships that were making them ready outward, or
unlading, and the mariners and aliens coming and going: and all these were to him as the curious
images woven on a tapestry.


At last when he had wellnigh come back again to the Katherine, he saw there a tall ship, which
he had scarce noted before, a ship all-boun, which had her boats out, and men sitting to the oars
thereof ready to tow her outwards when the hawser should be cast off, and by seeming her
mariners were but abiding for some one or other to come aboard.


So Walter stood idly watching the said ship, and as he looked, lo! folk passing him toward the
gangway. These were three; first came a dwarf, dark-brown of hue and hideous, with long arms
and ears exceeding great and dog-teeth that stuck out like the fangs of a wild beast. He was clad
in a rich coat of yellow silk, and bare in his hand a crooked bow, and was girt with a broad sax.


After him came a maiden, young by seeming, of scarce twenty summers; fair of face as a flower;
grey-eyed, brown-haired, with lips full and red, slim and gentle of body. Simple was her array, of
a short and strait green gown, so that on her right ankle was clear to see an iron ring.


Last of the three was a lady, tall and stately, so radiant of visage and glorious of raiment, that it
were hard to say what like she was; for scarce might the eye gaze steady upon her exceeding
beauty; yet must every son of Adam who found himself anigh her, lift up his eyes again after he



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had dropped them, and look again on her, and yet again and yet again. Even so did Walter, and
as the three passed by him, it seemed to him as if all the other folk there about had vanished and
were nought; nor had he any vision before his eyes of any looking on them, save himself alone.
They went over the gangway into the ship, and he saw them go along the deck till they came to
the house on the poop, and entered it and were gone from his sight.


There he stood staring, till little by little the thronging people of the quays came into his eye-shot
again; then he saw how the hawser was cast off and the boats fell to tugging the big ship toward
the harbour-mouth with hale and how of men. Then the sail fell down from the yard and was
sheeted home and filled with the fair wind as the ship’s bows ran up on the first green wave
outside the haven. Even therewith the shipmen cast abroad a banner, whereon was done in a