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

and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some
was riding and some was walking. And the weatherJ-well, it was just
roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now, all of a
sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads.
The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their
stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and
scampered every which way, and so did the camels.
We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to
the cool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to get
together and form the procession again; then they started along, but we
could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to
anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses,
and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the other
side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the mound
that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be watching the
caravan or us, we didn't know which. As the caravan got nearer, he sneaked
down on the other side and rushed to the other men and horses-for that is
what they was-and we see them mount in a hurry; and next, here they come,
like a house afire, some with lances and some with long guns, and all of
them yelling the best they could.
They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both
sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another
popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you
could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. There must 'a' been
six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they
broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and scurrying and
scampering around, and laying into each other like everything; and
whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded people
and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and camels racing off in
every direction.
At last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a
signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering
across the plain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it
off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging
after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was
separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had
to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face
with her hands. Then Tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and
we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the
saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child
wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a
tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went staggering
off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him, for we was
three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time.
We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We
could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head bowed
down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance, and
thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half a
mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child, which
was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her before the