The Adventure MEGAPACK ®. Уильям Хоуп Ходжсон

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      San Francisco spread a dust-colored haze over the horizon. White-faced sailors were clustered about him. This was the deck of the jungle-ship. And, amazing spectacle! His mouth dropped widely open; perspiration stood in droplets on his forehead.

      Red-headed Sally, his face like paste sprinkled with the cinnamon of his freckles, backed slowly out of sight behind the cabin. Between his lips was a long, black reed, from which issued compelling music, and after him, his eyes half-closed, his head swaying in time to the motion of his coils, while the sailors stood rigid with fascinated repulsion, glided Mazpa, a dazed captive.

      A glass was pressed against the Chinaman’s bloodless lips. He opened them, and swallowed automatically. His throat burned, but the reality of the world begun to return.

      Sally appeared on the deck, walking unsteadily.

      “You’d orter see him, fellers,” he said, swaying up to the still transfixed group. “All curled up for a nice nap, quiet as a lamb.” Then, more jerkily, “Give me a drink, quick!”

      He would have fallen, had not the little Englishman, who had followed him across the deck, caught his arm.

      Yen Sing, kneeling there, his bright, almond-slanted eyes turning from one to the other of the crowd, slowly comprehended. The Flute, then, was a conqueror of devils, and Mazpa’s evil struggle for one more soul had failed just as it was ended, because of Flute, who lived in a black reed and spoke with a shrill voice. Here was a god more powerful than those he had foresworn, a white man’s God, and it had saved him—him!

      He clasped Sally’s wide-trousered leg.

      “Let me worship thy strange god, oh, Sally,” he murmured in his native tongue.