"Valentin Katayev. A White Sail Gleams (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

swim on his side, cleaving the cool water with his smooth brown shoulder,
than he forgot everything in the world.
First he swam across the deep spot near the shore to the sand-bank.
There he stood up and began to walk about knee-deep in the transparent
water, examining the sandy bottom with its distinct fish-scale pattern.
At first glance the bottom seemed uninhabited. But a good close look
revealed living things. Moving across the wrinkles of the sand, now
appearing, now burying themselves, were tiny hermit crabs. Petya picked one
up from the bottom and skilfully pulled the crab-it even had tiny
nippers!-out of its shell.
Girls liked to string those little shells on twine. They made fine
necklaces. But men didn't go in for that sort of thing.
Then Petya caught sight of a jellyfish and went after it. The jellyfish
hung like a transparent lamp-shade, with a fringe of tentacles just as
transparent. It seemed to hang motionless-but that was not really so. The
thin blue gelatinous margin of the thick cupola was breathing and rippling,
like the edge of a parachute. The tentacles stirred too. The jellyfish moved
slantwise towards the bottom, as though sensing danger.
But Petya caught up with it. Carefully, so as not to touch the
poisonous edge which stung like nettles, he picked the jellyfish out of the
water with both hands, by its cupola. Then he flung its weighty but flimsy
body to the shore.
The jellyfish flew through the air, dropping some of its tentacles on
the way, and then slapped against the wet sand. The sun immediately flared
up in its slime like a silver star.
With a cry of delight Petya plunged from the sandbank into the deep
water and took to his favourite sport: swimming underwater with eyes open.
What rapture!
Before the boy's enchanted gaze there spread the wonderful world of the
submarine kingdom. Clearly visible, and enlarged as if by a magnifying
glass, were pebbles of all colours. They made a cobble stoned road of the
sea bed.
The stems of the sea plants were a fairy-tale forest shot through with
the cloudy green rays of a sun now as pale as the moon.
A huge old crab was scampering along sidewise among the roots, his
terrifying claws spread out like horns. On his spider-like legs he carried
the bulging box that was his back; it was dotted with white stony warts.
Petya wasn't the least scared. He knew how to deal with crabs. You had
to pick them up boldly, by the back, with two fingers. Then they couldn't
bite.
But he was not interested in the crab. Let it crawl along in
peace-crabs were no great rarity. The whole beach was strewn with their dry
claws and red shells.
Sea horses were much more interesting.
Just then a small school of them appeared among the seaweed. With their
chiselled faces and chests they looked for all the world like chess knights,
except that they had tails, curled forward. They swam, standing upright,
straight at Petya, spreading out their webbed fins like tiny underwater
dragons.
It was clear they had never expected to run into a hunter at that early