Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Марк Твен

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ it strode ashore, saying in its heart, ‘Let them that come after me invent theories and dream dreams about the Survival of the Fittest if they like, but I am the first that has done it!

      “This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other Australian hydrocephalous invertebrates, to an age long anterior to the advent of man upon the earth; they date back, indeed, to a time when a causeway hundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long, joined Australia to Africa, and the animals of the two countries were alike, and all belonged to that remote geological epoch known to science as the Old Red Grindstone Post-Pleosaurian. Later the causeway sank under the sea; subterranean convulsions lifted the African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before, but Australia kept her old level. In Africa’s new climate the animals necessarily began to develop and shade off into new forms and families and species, but the animals of Australia as necessarily remained stationary, and have so remained until this day. In the course of some millions of years the African Ornithorhynchus developed and developed and developed, and sluffed off detail after detail of its make-up until at last the creature became wholly disintegrated and scattered. Whenever you see a bird or a beast or a seal or an otter in Africa you know that he is merely a sorry surviving fragment of that sublime original of whom I have been speaking – that creature which was everything in general and nothing in particular – the opulently endowed ‘e pluribus unum’ of the animal world.

      “Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most venerable creature that exists in the earth today – Ornithorhynchus Platypus Extraordinariensis – whom God preserve!”

      When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like that with ease. And not only in the prose form, but in the poetical as well. He had written many pieces of poetry in his time, and these manuscripts he lent around among the passengers, and was willing to let them be copied. It seemed to me that the least technical one in the series, and the one which reached the loftiest note, perhaps, was his —

INVOCATION

      “Come forth from thy oozy couch,

      O Ornithorhynchus dear!

      And greet with a cordial claw

      The stranger that longs to hear

      “From thy own own lips the tale

      Of thy origin all unknown:

      Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be

      And flesh where should be bone;

      “And fishy fin where should be paw,

      And beaver-trowel tail,

      And snout of beast equip’d with teeth

      Where gills ought to prevail.

      “Come, Kangaroo, the good and true

      Foreshortened as to legs,

      And body tapered like a churn,

      And sack marsupial, i’ fegs,

      “And tells us why you linger here,

      Thou relic of a vanished time,

      When all your friends as fossils sleep,

      Immortalized in lime!”

      Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist; but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one. The above verses are indeed beautiful, and, in a way, touching; but there is a haunting something about them which unavoidably suggests the Sweet Singer of Michigan. It can hardly be doubted that the author had read the works of that poet and been impressed by them. It is not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or yet any phrase, but the style and swing and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all are there. Compare this Invocation with “Frank Dutton” – particularly stanzas first and seventeenth – and I think the reader will feel convinced that he who wrote the one had read the other:

I

      “Frank Dutton was as fine a lad

      As ever you wish to see,

      And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake

      On earth no more will he be,

      His age was near fifteen years,

      And he was a motherless boy,

      He was living with his grandmother

      When he was drowned, poor boy."

XVII

      “He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon,

      On Sunday he was found,

      And the tidings of that drowned boy

      Was heard for miles around.

      His form was laid by his mother’s side,

      Beneath the cold, cold ground,

      His friends for him will drop a tear

      When they view his little mound."

      The Sentimental Song Book.

      By Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36.

      CHAPTER IX

      It is your human environment that makes climate.

      – Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

      Sept. 15 – Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.

      That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while, there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water – a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the “break” spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet long, would go flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance whence he came you would see another flash; and another and another and another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant; and once sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm of wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those people will not see again until after they are dead.

      It was porpoises – porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on, turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary length – eight or ten feet – but every twist of their bodies sent a long procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been drinking.

      By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.

      Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits СКАЧАТЬ