"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer Abroad (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

no help; but Tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands
on our knees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down 'mongst my
other works, because I couldn't tell in the dark but it might be the
professor! which I thought it WAS.
Dear! I was so glad to have him back that I was just as near happy as a
person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. You
can't land a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on raining,
for I didn't want Tom to go meddling any more and make us so awful
uncomfortable. Well, I got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along the
rest of the night, which wasn't long, though it did seem so; and at
daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and pretty,
and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle
standing sober and thinking. Next, the sun come ablazing up gay and
splendid, and then we began to feel rusty and stretchy, and first we
knowed we was all asleep.


Chapter III. TOM EXPLAINS


WE went to sleep about four o'clock, and woke up about eight. The
professor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us
some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. That
was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp-set, and you
eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it
done before. It makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when he is
up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together.
There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by I says:
"Tom, didn't we start east?"
"Yes."
"How fast have we been going?"
"Well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round.
Sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety,
sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three
hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing
the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find
it."
"Well, then, it's just as I reckoned. The professor lied."
"Why?"
"Because if we was going so fast we ought to be past Illinois, oughtn't
we?"
"Certainly."
"Well, we ain't."
"What's the reason we ain't?"
"I know by the color. We're right over Illinois yet. And you can see
for yourself that Indiana ain't in sight."
"I wonder what's the matter with you, Huck. You know by the COLOR?"
"Yes, of course I do."
"What's the color got to do with it?"
"It's got everything to do with it. Illinois is green, Indiana is pink.