"Jack Vance - Elder Isles 02 - The Green Pearl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

"Indeed I would! Everyone else is out on the water while you sit in the sun catching flies. Your cousin
Junt left the harbour before dawn to make sure of his mackerel! Why did you not do the same?"



"Junt does not suffer miseries of the back as I do," muttered Sarles. "Also he sails the Lirlou, which is a
fine new boat."



"It is the fisherman who catches fish, not the boat. Junt brings in six times the catch you do."



"Only because his son Tamas fishes beside him."
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"Which means that each out-fishes you three times over."



Sarles cried out in anger: "Woman, when will you learn to curb your tongue? I would be off to the tavern
this instant had I one coin to rub against another."



"Why not use the leisure to repair the Prevail" Sarles threw his hands in the air and went down to the
beach where he assessed the deficiences of his craft. With nothing better to do, he carved a new
dead-eye for his shrouds. Cordage was too dear for his pocket, so he performed a set of make-shift
splices, which strengthened the shrouds but made an unsightly display.



And so it went. Sarles gave the Preval only what maintenance was needed to keep it afloat, and sallied
out among the reefs and rocks only when conditions were optimum, which was not often.



One day even Sarles became alarmed. With a soft breeze blowing on-shore, he rowed from the
harbour, hoisted his sprit-sail, set up the back-stay, adjusted the sheets and bow nicely across the swells
and out toward the reefs, where fish were most plentiful. . . . Peculiar! thought Sarles. Why did his
back-stay sag when he had only just set it up taut? Making an investigation, he discovered a daunting
fact: the stern-post to which the stay was attached had become so rotten from age and attacks of the
worm that it was about to break loose to the tension of the back-stay, thereby causing a great disaster.