Fauna and Family

Оглавление

Gerald Durrell. Fauna and Family

ALSO BY GERALD DURRELL

FOR CHILDREN

Contents

A Word in Advance

The Garden of the Gods

The Elements of Spring

Fakirs and Fiestas

The Royal Occasion

The Paths of Love

Dogs, Dormice and Disorder

Ghosts and Spiders

The Merriment of Friendship

AFTERWORD

Отрывок из книги

Fillets of Plaice (Godine, 2008)

The Overloaded Ark

.....

The old salt pans lay along the edge of the brackish lake, forming a giant chessboard with the cross-hatching of these placid canals, some as narrow as a chair, some thirty feet wide. Most of these waterways were only a couple of feet deep, but below the water lay an almost unplumbable depth of fine black silt. The Bootle Bumtrinket, by virtue of her shape and flat bottom, could be propelled up and down these inland waterways with comparative ease, for one did not have to worry about sudden gusts of wind or a sudden, bouncing cluster of wavelets, two things that always made her a bit alarmed. But the disadvantage of the canals was that they were fringed on each side with tall, rustling bamboo breaks which, while providing shade, precluded the wind, so the atmosphere was still, dark, hot and as richly odoriferous as a manure heap. For a time the artificial smell of the count vied with the scents of nature, but eventually nature won.

“Ees smell,” the count pointed out. “In France ze water ees hygiene.”

.....