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

fresh meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient
distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever
see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak,
fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don't want nothing better than that.
We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a
monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it
from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a
featherduster. It was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree
the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one,
but there warn't none. There was only big loose bunches of things like
oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because he said they
answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the other books. Of
course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a
spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They done it; so we done
it, too, and they was most amazing good.
By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead
animals. They was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion that
was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove the
bird away, it didn't do no good; he was back again the minute the lion was
busy.
The big birds come out of every part of the sky-you could make them out
with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them with
your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was there by
the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain't that an eye
for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions
couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he couldn't
imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far off.
It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe
they warn't kin. But Jim said that didn't make no difference. He said a
hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned
maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He
thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was
him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon
hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. But RECKONING don't settle
nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you
to no decision. So we give it up and let it drop.
Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this time there was
music. A lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom
allowed was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and
all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. They made a
picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture I ever
see. We had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't
stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was up two or three
times to look down at the animals and hear the music. It was like having a
front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which I hadn't ever had before, and
so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; I mightn't ever
have such a chance again.
We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all
day in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see
that none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for