Читать книгу The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen / Приключения барона Мюнхгаузена. Уровень 1 - Рудольф Эрих Распе, Готфрид Бюргер, Готфрид Август Бюргер - Страница 20

I was not always successful. I had the misfortune to be a prisoner of war; and, what is worse, I was sold for a slave. My daily task was not very hard and laborious, but rather irksome. It was to drive the Sultan’s bees every morning to their pasture-grounds, to attend them all the day long, and at night to drive them back to their hives.

One evening I missed a bee. Two bears caught it to tear it to pieces for the honey it carried. I had nothing in my hands but the silver hatchet, which the Sultan’s gardeners and farmers possessed. I threw it at the bears, with an intention to frighten them away. But the hatchet flew upwards, and continued rising till it reached the moon. How could I recover it? How could I fetch it down again?

I recollected that Turkey-beans[22] grow very quick, and run up to an astonishing height. I planted one immediately; it grew, and actually fastened itself to the moon. I climbed up by it into the moon, where I safely arrived, and found my silver hatchet. I found it in a heap of chaff and chopped straw. I was about to return: but, alas! The heat of the sun dried up my bean; it was totally useless for my descent.

I began to twist a rope of that chopped straw. This I fastened to the moon, and slid down to the end of it. But the rope was short. The earth was far away. So I held myself fast with the left hand, and with the hatchet in my right, I cut the long, now useless end of the upper part. I tied it to the lower end, and it brought me down to the Sultan’s garden. I was four or five miles from the earth at least when it broke. I fell to the ground with such amazing violence, that I found myself in a hole nine fathoms deep at least. I did not know how to get out again. However, I dug steps with my finger-nails, and easily accomplished it.