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been a great relief to the Mouser when Fafhrd had fallen into a profound sleep
with the coming of night, though then the illusion -- or reality -- of the sweet
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Click here to buy
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siren-singing had returned to trouble his own tranquillity.
Yes, the Mouser might well have thought of any of these matters, Fafhrd's
prophetic utterances in particular, while he lay poised but unsweating in the hot
sun along the stout bowsprit of the _Black Treasurer_, yet the fact is that he had
mind only for the jade marvel so close that he could almost reach down a hand
and touch the beginning of it.
It is well to approach all miracles and wonders by gradual stages or degrees,
and we can do this by examining another aspect of the glassy seascape of which
the Mouser also might well have been thinking -- but wasn't.
Although untroubled by swell, wavelet or faintest ripple or quiver, the Inner
Sea around the sloop was not perfectly flat. Here and there, scatteredly, it was
dimpled with small depressions about the size and shape of shallow saucers, as if
giant invisible featherweight water-beetles were standing about on it -- though
the dimples were not arranged in any six-legged or four-legged or even tripod
patterns. Moreover, a slim stalk of air seemed to go down from the center of each
dimple for an indefinite distance into the water, quite like the tiny whirlpool that
sometimes forms when the turquoise plug is pulled in the brimful golden bathtub
of the Queen of the East (or the drain unstoppered in a bathtub of any humbler
material belonging to any lowlier person) -- except that there was no whirling of
water in this case, and the air stalks were not twisted and knotted but straight, as
though scores of slim-bladed rapiers with guards like shallow saucers but all as
invisible as air had been plunged at random into the motionless waters around
the _Black Treasurer_. Or as though a sparse forest of invisible lily pads with
straight invisible stems had sprung up around the sloop.
Imagine such an air-stalked dimple magnified so that the saucer was not a
palm's breadth but a good spearcast across and the rodlike sword-straight stalk
not a fingernail's width but a good four feet, imagine the sloop slid prow-foremost
down into that shallow depression but stopping just short of the center and
floating motionless there, imagine the bowsprit of the slightly tilted ship
projecting over the exact center of the central tube or well of air, imagine a small,
stalwart, nut-brown man in a gray loincloth lying along the bowsprit, his feet
braced against the foredeck rails, and looking straight down the tube ... and you
have the Gray Mouser's situation exactly!
To be _in_ the Mouser's situation and peering down the tube was very
fascinating indeed, an experience calculated to drive other thoughts out of any
man's mind -- or even any woman's! The water here, a bowshot from the creamy
rock-wall, was green, remarkably clear, but too deep to allow a view of the bottom
-- soundings taken yesterday had shown it to vary between six score and seven
score feet. Through this water the well-size tube went down as perfectly circular
and as smooth as if it were walled with glass; and indeed the Mouser would have
believed that it was so walled -- that the water immediately around it had been
somehow frozen or hardened without altering in transparency -- except that at
the slightest noise, such as the Mouser's coughing, little quiverings would run up
and down it in the form of a series of ring-shaped waves.
What power prevented the tremendous weight of the sea from collapsing the
tube in an instant, the Mouser could not begin to imagine.
Yet it was endlessly fascinating to peer down it. Sunlight transmitted through
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Click here to buy
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the sea water illuminated it to a considerable depth brightly if greenishly, and the
circular wall played odd tricks with distance. For instance, at this moment the
Mouser, peering down slantwise through the side of the tube, saw a thick fish as
long as his arm swimming around it and nosing up to it. The shape of the fish was
very familiar yet he could not at once name it. Then thrusting his head out to one
side and peering down at the same fish through the clear water alongside the
tube, he saw that the fish was three times the length of his body -- in fact, a shark.
The Mouser shivered and told himself that the curved wall of the tube must act
like the reducing lenses used by a few artists in Lankhmar.
On the whole, though, the Mouser might well have decided in the end that the
vertical tunnel in the water was an illusion born of sun-glare and suggestion and
have put on the ice-goggles and stuffed his ears with wax against any more siren-
singing and then perhaps swigged at the forbidden brandy and gone to sleep,
except for certain other circumstances footing the whole affair much more firmly
in reality. For instance, there was a knotted rope securely tied to the bowsprit and
hanging down the center of the tube, and this rope creaked from time to time
with the weight on it, and also there were threads of black smoke coming out of
the watery hole (these were what made the Mouser cough), and last but not least
there was a torch burning redly far down in the hole -- so far down its flame
looked no bigger than a candle's -- and just beside the flame, somewhat obscured
by its smoke and much tinied by distance, was the upward-peering face of Fafhrd!
The Mouser was inclined to take on faith the reality of anything Fafhrd got
mixed up with, certainly anything that Fafhrd got physically into -- the near-
seven-foot Northerner was much too huge a hulk of solid matter to be picturable
as strolling arm-in-arm with illusions.
The events leading up to the reality-footing facts of the rope, the smoke, and
Fafhrd down the air-well had been quite simple. At dawn the sloop had begun to
drift mysteriously among the water dimples, there being no perceptible wind or
current. Shortly afterward it had bumped over the lip of the large saucer-shaped
depression and slid to its present position with a little rush and then frozen there,
as though the sloop's bowsprit and the hole were mutually desirous magnetic
poles coupling together. Thereafter, while the Mouser had watched with eyes
goggling and teeth a-chatter, Fafhrd had sighted down the hole, grunted with
stolid satisfaction, slung the knotted rope down it, and then proceeded to array
himself, seemingly with both war and love in mind -- pomading his bushy hair
and beard, perfuming his hairy chest and armpits, putting on a blue silk tunic
under the gleaming one of otterskin and all his silver-plated necklaces,
armbands, brooches and rings as well, but also strapping longsword and ax to his
sides and lacing on his spiked boots. Then he had lit a long thin torch of resinous
pine in the galley firebox, and when it was flaming bravely he had, despite the
Mouser's solicitous cries and tugging protests, gone out on the bowsprit and
lowered himself into the hole, using thumb and forefinger of his right hand to
grip the torch and the other three fingers of that hand, along with his left hand, to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl exclamation.htw.pl
been a great relief to the Mouser when Fafhrd had fallen into a profound sleep
with the coming of night, though then the illusion -- or reality -- of the sweet
a
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Click here to buy
Click here to buy
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siren-singing had returned to trouble his own tranquillity.
Yes, the Mouser might well have thought of any of these matters, Fafhrd's
prophetic utterances in particular, while he lay poised but unsweating in the hot
sun along the stout bowsprit of the _Black Treasurer_, yet the fact is that he had
mind only for the jade marvel so close that he could almost reach down a hand
and touch the beginning of it.
It is well to approach all miracles and wonders by gradual stages or degrees,
and we can do this by examining another aspect of the glassy seascape of which
the Mouser also might well have been thinking -- but wasn't.
Although untroubled by swell, wavelet or faintest ripple or quiver, the Inner
Sea around the sloop was not perfectly flat. Here and there, scatteredly, it was
dimpled with small depressions about the size and shape of shallow saucers, as if
giant invisible featherweight water-beetles were standing about on it -- though
the dimples were not arranged in any six-legged or four-legged or even tripod
patterns. Moreover, a slim stalk of air seemed to go down from the center of each
dimple for an indefinite distance into the water, quite like the tiny whirlpool that
sometimes forms when the turquoise plug is pulled in the brimful golden bathtub
of the Queen of the East (or the drain unstoppered in a bathtub of any humbler
material belonging to any lowlier person) -- except that there was no whirling of
water in this case, and the air stalks were not twisted and knotted but straight, as
though scores of slim-bladed rapiers with guards like shallow saucers but all as
invisible as air had been plunged at random into the motionless waters around
the _Black Treasurer_. Or as though a sparse forest of invisible lily pads with
straight invisible stems had sprung up around the sloop.
Imagine such an air-stalked dimple magnified so that the saucer was not a
palm's breadth but a good spearcast across and the rodlike sword-straight stalk
not a fingernail's width but a good four feet, imagine the sloop slid prow-foremost
down into that shallow depression but stopping just short of the center and
floating motionless there, imagine the bowsprit of the slightly tilted ship
projecting over the exact center of the central tube or well of air, imagine a small,
stalwart, nut-brown man in a gray loincloth lying along the bowsprit, his feet
braced against the foredeck rails, and looking straight down the tube ... and you
have the Gray Mouser's situation exactly!
To be _in_ the Mouser's situation and peering down the tube was very
fascinating indeed, an experience calculated to drive other thoughts out of any
man's mind -- or even any woman's! The water here, a bowshot from the creamy
rock-wall, was green, remarkably clear, but too deep to allow a view of the bottom
-- soundings taken yesterday had shown it to vary between six score and seven
score feet. Through this water the well-size tube went down as perfectly circular
and as smooth as if it were walled with glass; and indeed the Mouser would have
believed that it was so walled -- that the water immediately around it had been
somehow frozen or hardened without altering in transparency -- except that at
the slightest noise, such as the Mouser's coughing, little quiverings would run up
and down it in the form of a series of ring-shaped waves.
What power prevented the tremendous weight of the sea from collapsing the
tube in an instant, the Mouser could not begin to imagine.
Yet it was endlessly fascinating to peer down it. Sunlight transmitted through
a
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s
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F
f
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r
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Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
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the sea water illuminated it to a considerable depth brightly if greenishly, and the
circular wall played odd tricks with distance. For instance, at this moment the
Mouser, peering down slantwise through the side of the tube, saw a thick fish as
long as his arm swimming around it and nosing up to it. The shape of the fish was
very familiar yet he could not at once name it. Then thrusting his head out to one
side and peering down at the same fish through the clear water alongside the
tube, he saw that the fish was three times the length of his body -- in fact, a shark.
The Mouser shivered and told himself that the curved wall of the tube must act
like the reducing lenses used by a few artists in Lankhmar.
On the whole, though, the Mouser might well have decided in the end that the
vertical tunnel in the water was an illusion born of sun-glare and suggestion and
have put on the ice-goggles and stuffed his ears with wax against any more siren-
singing and then perhaps swigged at the forbidden brandy and gone to sleep,
except for certain other circumstances footing the whole affair much more firmly
in reality. For instance, there was a knotted rope securely tied to the bowsprit and
hanging down the center of the tube, and this rope creaked from time to time
with the weight on it, and also there were threads of black smoke coming out of
the watery hole (these were what made the Mouser cough), and last but not least
there was a torch burning redly far down in the hole -- so far down its flame
looked no bigger than a candle's -- and just beside the flame, somewhat obscured
by its smoke and much tinied by distance, was the upward-peering face of Fafhrd!
The Mouser was inclined to take on faith the reality of anything Fafhrd got
mixed up with, certainly anything that Fafhrd got physically into -- the near-
seven-foot Northerner was much too huge a hulk of solid matter to be picturable
as strolling arm-in-arm with illusions.
The events leading up to the reality-footing facts of the rope, the smoke, and
Fafhrd down the air-well had been quite simple. At dawn the sloop had begun to
drift mysteriously among the water dimples, there being no perceptible wind or
current. Shortly afterward it had bumped over the lip of the large saucer-shaped
depression and slid to its present position with a little rush and then frozen there,
as though the sloop's bowsprit and the hole were mutually desirous magnetic
poles coupling together. Thereafter, while the Mouser had watched with eyes
goggling and teeth a-chatter, Fafhrd had sighted down the hole, grunted with
stolid satisfaction, slung the knotted rope down it, and then proceeded to array
himself, seemingly with both war and love in mind -- pomading his bushy hair
and beard, perfuming his hairy chest and armpits, putting on a blue silk tunic
under the gleaming one of otterskin and all his silver-plated necklaces,
armbands, brooches and rings as well, but also strapping longsword and ax to his
sides and lacing on his spiked boots. Then he had lit a long thin torch of resinous
pine in the galley firebox, and when it was flaming bravely he had, despite the
Mouser's solicitous cries and tugging protests, gone out on the bowsprit and
lowered himself into the hole, using thumb and forefinger of his right hand to
grip the torch and the other three fingers of that hand, along with his left hand, to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]