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

shawl belts with long, silvermounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels
had their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the
freight out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to the
dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We took a
small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and then we
wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that we could
think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would blow away
again, of course.
Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot
on the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people
again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how
they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't
make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and
about till their food and water give out and they starved to death; but
Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and so
that guess wouldn't do. So at last we give it up, and judged we wouldn't
think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited.
Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile,
and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes made
out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. We wondered if
we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but Tom thought
it over and said no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they
would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on us for putting the
temptation in their way. So we went on; but I wished we had took all they
had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all left.
We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was
dreadful thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water,
but it was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to
scald your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi river water,
the best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that
would help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well, we
hadn't been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the
lost people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a
drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter
of a minute before. Why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths
open and pant like a dog.
Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we'd
got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. So we
done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms
got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours-three hours-just
gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see the
quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know what
real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he
ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't stand
it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the locker, and
give it up.
But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and
shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the
water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything look
so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we just