"The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

interest until they amounted to seventy-seven.
"My dear sister," said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I
quote the language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my
dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the
bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily
repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in
withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores- a
thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of Sinbad the sailor.
This person went through numerous other and more interesting
adventures than those which I related; but the truth is, I felt sleepy
on the particular night of their narration, and so was seduced into
cutting them short- a grievous piece of misconduct, for which I only
trust that Allah will forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to
remedy my great neglect- and as soon as I have given the king a
pinch or two in order to wake him up so far that he may stop making
that horrible noise, I will forthwith entertain you (and him if he
pleases) with the sequel of this very remarkable story.
Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the
"Isitsoornot," expressed no very particular intensity of
gratification; but the king, having been sufficiently pinched, at
length ceased snoring, and finally said, "hum!" and then "hoo!" when
the queen, understanding these words (which are no doubt Arabic) to
signify that he was all attention, and would do his best not to
snore any more- the queen, I say, having arranged these matters to her
satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into the history of Sinbad the
sailor:
"'At length, in my old age, [these are the words of Sinbad
himself, as retailed by Scheherazade]- 'at length, in my old age,
and after enjoying many years of tranquillity at home, I became once
more possessed of a desire of visiting foreign countries; and one day,
without acquainting any of my family with my design, I packed up
some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious and least bulky,
and, engaged a porter to carry them, went with him down to the
sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance vessel that might convey
me out of the kingdom into some region which I had not as yet
explored.
"'Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down
beneath some trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of
perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw none whatever. At
length I fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or humming
sound; and the porter, after listening awhile, declared that he also
could distinguish it. Presently it grew louder, and then still louder,
so that we could have no doubt that the object which caused it was
approaching us. At length, on the edge of the horizon, we discovered a
black speck, which rapidly increased in size until we made it out to
be a vast monster, swimming with a great part of its body above the
surface of the sea. It came toward us with inconceivable swiftness,
throwing up huge waves of foam around its breast, and illuminating all
that part of the sea through which it passed, with a long line of fire
that extended far off into the distance.