Отрывок из книги
Louisa Jebb Wilkins
Published by Good Press, 2019
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Half way down the hillside, perched on a projecting ledge just off the road, stood a lonely coffee-house. The Zaptiehs, pointing at it with their whips, hailed it with delight. They slid off their horses, and holding ours, helped us to dismount. We sat in the porch and sipped thick, hot Turkish coffee; below us the lake Ascanius lay like a blue sheet between the purple hills, its eastern end fringed round with a band of green, in which the minarets and domes of Isnik itself were just visible. All around us the stunted shrubs still formed harbour for the suspected brigands. Our Zaptiehs lay stretched on the ground in front, apparently asleep; but their rifles were never laid aside, and the least stir in the bushes made us realise their state of alert watchfulness.
But not a living creature showed itself, and we rode on down and down the curving incline until we reached the green band of vegetation and our horses trod softly through grassy slopes of olive plantations, whose grey leaves shone like silver as the sun's low rays beat through them. Past the olive plantations lay a stretch of low-lying reedy marsh.
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