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

caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned
they had enough business on their hands for one while, anyway, with the
wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did. We swooped down and
stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which was
a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, too, considering it
was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a horse; and then we
started for the mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable near by, and
Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he was close back of her the
child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and
fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid and snatched it and
hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and then snatched off a gold
chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged him again, and jerked up
the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the time; and Jim he shoved
for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we was back up in the sky and
the woman was staring up, with the back of her head between her shoulders
and the child with its arms locked around her neck. And there she stood,
as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in the sky.


Chapter VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA


"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his
feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north of
us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the weather
and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north,
too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.
Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kinds of birds-a wild pigeon, maybe, or a
railroad.
But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a
hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in the
world that could do that-except one, and that was a flea.
"A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly
speakin'-"
"He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?"
"I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's only jist a' animal.
No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. He
mus' be a bug. Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug."
"I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second place?"
"Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a
flea don't."
"He don't, don't he? Come, now, what IS a long distance, if you know?"
"Why, it's miles, and lots of 'em-anybody knows dat."
"Can't a man walk miles?"
"Yassir, he kin."
"As many as a railroad?"
"Yassir, if you give him time."
"Can't a flea?"