"Hans Phaall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

astonished nor horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it was a
kind of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to
display in extricating myself from this dilemma; and I never, for a
moment, looked upon my ultimate safety as a question susceptible of
doubt. For a few minutes I remained wrapped in the profoundest
meditation. I have a distinct recollection of frequently compressing
my lips, putting my forefinger to the side of my nose, and making
use of other gesticulations and grimaces common to men who, at ease in
their arm-chairs, meditate upon matters of intricacy or importance.
Having, as I thought, sufficiently collected my ideas, I now, with
great caution and deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and
unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my
inexpressibles. This buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat
rusty, turned with great difficulty on their axis. I brought them,
however, after some trouble, at right angles to the body of the
buckle, and was glad to find them remain firm in that position.
Holding the instrument thus obtained within my teeth, I now
proceeded to untie the knot of my cravat. I had to rest several
times before I could accomplish this manoeuvre, but it was at length
accomplished. To one end of the cravat I then made fast the buckle,
and the other end I tied, for greater security, tightly around my
wrist. Drawing now my body upwards, with a prodigious exertion of
muscular force, I succeeded, at the very first trial, in throwing
the buckle over the car, and entangling it, as I had anticipated, in
the circular rim of the wicker-work.
My body was now inclined towards the side of the car, at an angle of
about forty-five degrees; but it must not be understood that I was
therefore only forty-five degrees below the perpendicular. So far from
it, I still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon; for the
change of situation which I had acquired, had forced the bottom of the
car considerably outwards from my position, which was accordingly
one of the most imminent and deadly peril. It should be remembered,
however, that when I fell in the first instance, from the car, if I
had fallen with my face turned toward the balloon, instead of turned
outwardly from it, as it actually was; or if, in the second place, the
cord by which I was suspended had chanced to hang over the upper edge,
instead of through a crevice near the bottom of the car,- I say it
may be readily conceived that, in either of these supposed cases, I
should have been unable to accomplish even as much as I had now
accomplished, and the wonderful adventures of Hans Phaall would have
been utterly lost to posterity, I had therefore every reason to be
grateful; although, in point of fact, I was still too stupid to be
anything at all, and hung for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour in that
extraordinary manner, without making the slightest farther exertion
whatsoever, and in a singularly tranquil state of idiotic enjoyment.
But this feeling did not fail to die rapidly away, and thereunto
succeeded horror, and dismay, and a chilling sense of utter
helplessness and ruin. In fact, the blood so long accumulating in
the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up my
spirits with madness and delirium, had now begun to retire within