Читать «Лучшие повести британских и американских писателей / Best Short Novels by British & American Authors» онлайн - страница 48

‘We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three а day) and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in а still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get а particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like а weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.