"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

swiftness and went gliding up the air, swept horizontally forward in a wide
curve, and vanished again in the steaming specks of snow. And, through the
ribs of its body, Graham saw two little men, very minute and active,
searching the snowy areas about him, as it seemed to him, with field
glasses. For a second they were clear, then hazy through a thick whirl of
snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they were gone.

"Now!" cried his companion. "Come!"

He pulled Graham's sleeve, and incontinently the two were running headlong
down the arcade of ironwork beneath the wind-wheels. Graham, running
blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him suddenly. He
found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. It extended as far as
he could see right and left. It seemed to cut off their progress in either
direction.

"Do as I do," whispered his guide. He lay down and crawled to the edge,
thrust his head over and twisted until one leg hung. He seemed to feel for
something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edge into the
gulf. His head reappeared. "It is a ledge," he whispered. "In the dark all
the way along. Do as I did."

Graham hesitated, went down upon all fours, crawled to the edge, and peered
into a velvety blackness. For a sickly moment he had courage neither to go
on nor retreat, then he sat and hung his leg down, felt his guide's hands
pulling at him, had a horrible sensation of sliding over the edge into the
unfathomable, splashed, and felt himself in a slushy gutter, impenetrably
dark.

"This way," whispered the voice, and he began crawling along the gutter
through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. They
continued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundred
stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees of
cold, damp, and exhaustion. In a little while he ceased to feel his hands
and feet.

The gutter sloped downwards. He observed that they were now many feet below
the edge of the buildings. Rows of spectral white shapes like the ghosts of
blind-drawn windows rose above them. They came to the end of a cable
fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible and dropping into
impenetrable shadows. Suddenly his hand came against his guide's.

"Still!" whispered the latter very softly.

He looked up with a start and saw the huge wings of the flying machine
gliding slowly and noiselessly overhead athwart the broad band of
snow-flecked grey-blue sky. In a moment it was hidden again.

"Keep still; they were just turning."