The Lost World Classics - Ultimate Collection. Жюль Верн

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      Chapter XV.

       The Angry, Whispering Globe

       Table of Contents

      Our way led along a winding path between banked masses of softly radiant blooms, groups of feathery ferns whose plumes were starred with fragrant white and blue flowerets, slender creepers swinging from the branches of the strangely trunked trees, bearing along their threads orchid-like blossoms both delicately frail and gorgeously flamboyant.

      The path we trod was an exquisite mosaic — pastel greens and pinks upon a soft grey base, garlands of nimbused forms like the flaming rose of the Rosicrucians held in the mouths of the flying serpents. A smaller pavilion arose before us, single-storied, front wide open.

      Upon its threshold Rador paused, bowed deeply, and motioned us within. The chamber we entered was large, closed on two sides by screens of grey; at the back gay, concealing curtains. The low table of blue stone, dressed with fine white cloths, stretched at one side flanked by the cushioned divans.

      At the left was a high tripod bearing one of the rosy globes we had seen in the house of Yolara; at the head of the table a smaller globe similar to the whispering one. Rador pressed upon its base, and two other screens slid into place across the entrance, shutting in the room.

      He clapped his hands; the curtains parted, and two girls came through them. Tall and willow lithe, their bluish-black hair falling in ringlets just below their white shoulders, their clear eyes of forget-me-not blue, and skins of extraordinary fineness and purity — they were singularly attractive. Each was clad in an extremely scanty bodice of silken blue, girdled above a kirtle that came barely to their very pretty knees.

      “Food and drink,” ordered Rador.

      They dropped back through the curtains.

      “Do you like them?” he asked us.

      “Some chickens!” said Larry. “They delight the heart,” he translated for Rador.

      The green dwarf’s next remark made me gasp.

      “They are yours,” he said.

      Before I could question him further upon this extraordinary statement the pair re-entered, bearing a great platter on which were small loaves, strange fruits, and three immense flagons of rock crystal — two filled with a slightly sparkling yellow liquid and the third with a purplish drink. I became acutely sensible that it had been hours since I had either eaten or drunk. The yellow flagons were set before Larry and me, the purple at Rador’s hand.

      The girls, at his signal, again withdrew. I raised my glass to my lips and took a deep draft. The taste was unfamiliar but delightful.

      Almost at once my fatigue disappeared. I realized a clarity of mind, an interesting exhilaration and sense of irresponsibility, of freedom from care, that were oddly enjoyable. Larry became immediately his old gay self.

      The green dwarf regarded us whimsically, sipping from his great flagon of rock crystal.

      “Much do I desire to know of that world you came from,” he said at last —“through the rocks,” he added, slyly.

      “And much do we desire to know of this world of yours, O Rador,” I answered.

      Should I ask him of the Dweller; seek from him a clue to Throckmartin? Again, clearly as a spoken command, came the warning to forbear, to wait. And once more I obeyed.

      “Let us learn, then, from each other.” The dwarf was laughing. “And first — are all above like you — drawn out”— he made an expressive gesture —“and are there many of you?”

      “There are —” I hesitated, and at last spoke the Polynesian that means tens upon tens multiplied indefinitely —“there are as many as the drops of water in the lake we saw from the ledge where you found us,” I continued; “many as the leaves on the trees without. And they are all like us — varyingly.”

      He considered skeptically, I could see, my remark upon our numbers.

      “In Muria,” he said at last, “the men are like me or like Lugur. Our women are as you see them — like Yolara or those two who served you.” He hesitated. “And there is a third; but only one.”

      Larry leaned forward eagerly.

      “Brown-haired with glints of ruddy bronze, golden-eyed, and lovely as a dream, with long, slender, beautiful hands?” he cried.

      “Where saw you HER?” interrupted the dwarf, starting to his feet.

      “Saw her?” Larry recovered himself. “Nay, Rador, perhaps, I only dreamed СКАЧАТЬ