Collected Short Stories. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ the brown stones: through the tunnel of green up to the falls I knew the dark way. I knew it without thinking, and I did not put a foot on dry ground nor make a noise above the noise of the water until I came to the falls and then I stepped on a dry rock only three times all the way up the wide mouth. It is easier to climb with your hands and feet than to run on a bare road. And I came out into the open for an instant below the culvert on the road, a place where I could look back, back and far down to the smooth green at the foot of the old bridge.

      It was still there, casting to and fro like a hound, but with inconceivable rapidity. Halfway up the meadow sometimes to hit back on the line, so eager, then a silent rush to the water’s edge and a check as if it had run into a stone wall: then over and over again, the eager ceaseless tracing back and fro. Vague (except in movement), uncoloured, low on the ground.

      There was a cart on the road now, well above the ruined cottage, and I went home. I changed my boots without being seen – they had kept the water out for a long time, although I had been up to my knees at once; in the end the water had come in down from my ankles, quite slowly.

      That night and afterwards, when I told the thing over to myself I added a piece to make the passing of the road again more bearable. In the added piece my mother came in and said that we were all to be careful when we went out because there was a mad dog. ‘Hugh was found on the old bridge,’ she said (Hugh was one of the farm boys), ‘at the foot of the old bridge, with his face bitten. They have taken him to hospital, but he will not speak yet.’

The Slope of the High Mountain

      SNOW HAD FALLEN in the night and it lay on all the ground above five hundred feet, showing brave in the sun and making the sky so blue that it was a living pleasure to look at it.

      To the men walking fast up the Nantmor road the sharp cold was a pleasure too, for their hurry had warmed them to a fine heat. They had already come some miles over the mountains before they had struck the metalled road, along an ancient track that wound among the high bogs, often ambiguous and always hard to be found: they had followed it without losing it, but it had taken time above their allowance. They were hurrying, therefore, with the fear of lateness behind them, and their nailed boots rang quick on the hard road, and they steamed in the frosty air.

      It was to a meet of foxhounds that they were hurrying, a meet right under Snowdon, at ten o’clock. Moel Ddu was on their left, and Moel Hebog after it, and the snow lay well down their sides; the men could not see Snowdon yet, for the hills shut in the top of the valley. The cruel black rocks of the Arddu rose sheer on the right hand, and the Nantmor river ran fierce below them. Far along on the road ahead a man was walking fast: he was a dark figure, dressed in black, incongruous among the rocks, and he was singing passionately. It was a hymn in Welsh and he was a shepherd: presently he vanished at a turning in the road, and although they heard his singing high up among the stunted trees they did not see the man again.

      The road continued to rise and soon there were no more trees on either hand, and the black rocks showed harsher. The top of the valley was desolate with the gigantic spew of a dead slate quarry, high and lonely on the deserted road. Marching lines of square pillars showed where the aqueduct had run: many of them leaned strangely, and some had fallen. Huge, unprofitable slate rocks lined the road, holding back the black hills of jagged spoil.

      The men had spoken little for the last half-hour, but now they said to one another that the road would soon turn to the left, and Gonville began to talk about how birds cannot tell how fast they are going in the air if there is a cloud or no light at all. Brown did not believe what he was told, but he was unable to refute it. Gonville, aware of his disbelief, went on in a dogmatic tone, telling him more about the birds of the air and the way they know nothing except possibly by magnetism. However, Brown did not quarrel with him, and when the road turned to the left all thoughts of wrangling went out of his head.

      Right before them was Snowdon, sharp and brilliant in the sky, with Lliwedd jutting fiercely on the right and deep new snow over all, sparkling nobly in the sun. New clean snow, unspoiled by runnels, and Snowdon’s eastern face looked smooth by reason of the depth of the snow.

      They were looking at Snowdon from a fair height and with a deep valley between: this waste of air below and before them gave the mountain an altitude and a majesty far beyond the amount of its height in feet. The sun was behind them, and it shone on the incisive, spectacular ridge that joins Lliwedd and Snowdon, separating the peaks with a great sweep of hard shadow.

      It was a sight to make even a dull man’s heart leap and exult, like sudden good news or a lost thing found.

      The way was downhill now, down into Nant Gwynant, with the big lakes one on either hand and the river joining them. The hard walking they had done had caught up with the clock, and when they came down into Nant Gwynant, to the Glaslyn and to the gate leading up to the farm of Hafod Llan they were before their time. For all that, anxiety harassed them as they waited by the gate where the milk churn stood, and they discussed the misadventures that might have happened, the possibility of a mistake in the time and of an error in their route – suppose, they said, the Captain has gone up by another way? But when they had been worrying themselves for a quarter of an hour the car and the trailer passed them and swung up the cart track to Hafod Llan. They ran after it and came up as the Master was going into the farmhouse to ask after his fox. There were a few other people, and the farm children stared at them and the hounds.

      Eight couples were there, stretching and walking about: there was a strong smell of hounds everywhere. The outraged farm dogs bawled from a distance, but offered nothing more. The hunt terriers ran busily to and fro; all hard-bitten and many with recent scars and bald patches. The hounds were mixed. There were Welsh hounds, fell-hounds, and crosses, and there was an English bitch with a noble, judicious head who looked strange among the slim, fine-boned creatures around her. Benign hounds they were, but not effusive like some; Ranter, Rambler, Ringwood, Driver and Melody, Drummer, Marquis, and Music, the surest of them all.

      The Master came out of the farmhouse. He was of an ancient family, and his people had hunted this country above three hundred years. He had a falcon’s nose and eye, and his moustache curled with a magnificent arrogance. He wore a very old cloth cap and a torn Burberry which concealed his horn and the whip he carried over the shoulder of his jacket. He spoke to the huntsman in Welsh and they moved off towards the Gallt y Wenallt, the mountain behind the wood.

      When they came to a gate at the bottom of the wood the Master turned off downward and the huntsman, with the field and the hounds, went up through the copse. Hounds were soon out of sight among the trees, and Gonville and Brown pushed themselves to keep up with the long-legged huntsman. Soon they reached the snow where it lay thin and melting in the open spaces between the trees: they climbed quickly past the height where it was melting and came out at the top of the wood. As they cleared the trees a hound spoke below them, and they paused for a moment. Hounds passed up through the wood, working intently, but with very little sound; they were moving quite fast, and when another hound spoke – a deep-mouthed hound it was – they were far along.

      The men had reached a path, and they followed it. It ran up from the wood to the top of a bluff, an almost sheer cliff that rose high above the woods. They could see hounds below them when they reached the top of this bluff and they stopped in a sheltered place – sheltered, because the wind, a small wind that came off the snow, bit very sharp and hard, they being in a sweat with the hurry.

      They had come round the shoulder of the Gallt y Wenallt out of the sun, and here it was much colder. The face of Wenallt, running steeply down to Llyn Gwynant, was on their left: below them, at the bottom of the mountain, was a deep belt of trees; above the trees, a long sloping scree that stretched up to the foot of the cliff. Below the wood was the still СКАЧАТЬ