Soldiers Three

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Rudyard Kipling. Soldiers Three

THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE

OF THOSE CALLED

PRIVATE LEAROYD’S STORY

THE BIG DRUNK DRAF’

THE WRECK OF THE VISIGOTH

THE SOLID MULDOON

WITH THE MAIN GUARD

IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE

BLACK JACK

L’ENVOI

POOR DEAR MAMMA

THE WORLD WITHOUT

THE TENTS OF KEDAR

WITH ANY AMAZEMENT

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

FATIMA

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

THE SWELLING OF JORDAN

DRAY WARA YOW DEE

THE JUDGMENT OF DUNGARA

AT HOWLI THANA

GEMINI

AT TWENTY-TWO

IN FLOOD TIME

THE SENDING OF DANA DA

ON THE CITY WALL

Отрывок из книги

We were wallowing through the China Seas in a dense fog, the horn blowing every two minutes for the benefit of the fishery craft that crowded the waterways. From the bridge the fo’c’sle was invisible; from the hand-wheel at the stern the captain’s cabin. The fog held possession of everything – the pearly white fog. Once or twice when it tried to lift, we saw a glimpse of the oily sea, the flitting vision of a junk’s sail spread in the vain hope of catching the breeze, or the buoys of a line of nets. Somewhere close to us lay the land, but it might have been the Kurile Islands for aught we knew. Very early in the morning there passed us, not a cable’s-length away, but as unseen as the spirits of the dead, a steamer of the same line as ours. She howled melodiously in answer to our bellowing, and passed on.

‘Suppose she had hit us,’ said a man from Saigon. ‘Then we should have gone down,’ answered the chief officer sweetly. ‘Beastly thing to go down in a fog,’ said a young gentleman who was travelling for pleasure. ‘Chokes a man both ways, y’ know.’ We were comfortably gathered in the smoking-room, the weather being too cold to venture on the deck. Conversation naturally turned upon accidents of fog, the horn tooting significantly in the pauses between the tales. I heard of the wreck of the Eric, the cutting down of the Strathnairn within half a mile of harbour, and the carrying away of the bow plates of the Sigismund outside Sandy Hook.

.....

‘“Peg him out, Sorr,” sez I, in a whishper.

‘“Peg him out!” sez me orf’cer bhoy, up loud, just as if ‘twas battalion-p’rade an’ he pickin’ his wurrds from the Sargint.

.....