"Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 of 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

regarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time so confounded
and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could make up my mind
to communicate the circumstances to my friend.

Near the close of exceedingly warm day, I was sitting, book in hand, at an
open window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a view
of a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been denuded
by what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its trees. My
thoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to the gloom
and desolation of the neighboring city. Uplifting my eyes from the page,
they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an object -- upon some
living monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly made its way
from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the dense forest
below. As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my own sanity -- or
at least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes passed before I
succeeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad nor in a dream. Yet
when I described the monster (which I distinctly saw, and calmly surveyed
through the whole period of its progress), my readers, I fear, will feel
more difficulty in being convinced of these points than even I did myself.

Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of the
large trees near which it passed -- the few giants of the forest which had
escaped the fury of the land-slide -- I concluded it to be far larger than
any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line, because the
shape of the monster suggested the idea- the hull of one of our
seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the general
outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of a
proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as the
body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an immense
quantity of black shaggy hair- more than could have been supplied by the
coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this hair downwardly
and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those of the wild
boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending forward, parallel
with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff, thirty
or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal and in shape a
perfect prism, -- it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the rays of the
declining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the apex to the
earth. From it there were outspread two pairs of wings- each wing nearly
one hundred yards in length -- one pair being placed above the other, and
all thickly covered with metal scales; each scale apparently some ten or
twelve feet in diameter. I observed that the upper and lower tiers of
wings were connected by a strong chain. But the chief peculiarity of this
horrible thing was the representation of a Death's Head, which covered
nearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was as accurately traced
in glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body, as if it had been
there carefully designed by an artist. While I regarded the terrific
animal, and more especially the appearance on its breast, with a feeling
or horror and awe -- with a sentiment of forthcoming evil, which I found
it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I perceived the huge
jaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand themselves, and