The Amphibian / Человек-амфибия. Книга для чтения на английском языке

”

“He can’t refuse help to a sick man,” insisted Zurita.

The spy-hole shut; the footsteps died away. Only the dogs kept up their furious barking.

Venting some of his anger in choice invective, the Spaniard set out for the schooner.

Should he lodge a complaint against Salvator in Buenos Aires, he asked himself once he was aboard. But what was the use? Zurita shook in futile rage. His bushy black moustache was in real danger now as he kept tugging at it in his agitation, making it fall like a barometer showing the doldrums.

Little by little, however, he quietened down and set to thinking what he should do next.

As he went on thinking his sunburnt fingers would travel up more and more often to give a flip to his drooping moustache. The barometer was rising.

At last he emerged on deck, and to everybody’s surprise, ordered the crew to weigh anchor.

The Jellyfish stood for Buenos Aires.

“And about time too,” Baltasar commented. “So much time and effort wasted. A curse on that �devil’ with a �god’ for a crony!”

The Sick Granddaughter

The sun was angrily hot.

An old Indian, thin and ragged, was plodding along a dusty country road that ran through alternating fields of wheat, maize and oats. In his arms he carried a child covered against the sun with a little blanket very much the worse for wear. The child’s eyes were half-closed; an enormous tumour bulged high on its neck. Whenever the old man stumbled the child groaned hoarsely and its eyelids quivered. Then the old man would stand still to blow into its face.

“If only I can get it there alive,” he whispered and quickened his pace.

Once in front of the steel gate the old Indian shifted the child onto his left arm and gave the side door four raps with his right hand.

He had a glimpse of an eye through the spy-hole, the bolts rattled and the door swung open.

The Indian stepped timidly inside. Standing in front of him was a white-smocked old Black with a head of snowwhite hair.

“I’ve brought a sick child,” the Indian said.

The Black nodded, shot the bolts home and motioned to the Indian to follow.

The Indian looked round him. He found himself in a small prison-like court, paved with big flagstones, with not a blade of grass anywhere. A wall lower than the outer one divided the court from the rest of the estate. At the gateway in the inner wall stood a large-windowed whitewashed building.