The Amphibian / Человек-амфибия. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Александр Беляев
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felt his blood throb in his temples as though he had used up his store of oxygen in those few minutes under water.
He motioned to Baltasar and they went out of the cave, and came up.
The Araucanians who had been on tenterhooks waiting for them were very glad to see them back.
“What do you make of it, Baltasar?” said Zurita after he had taken off his helmet and recovered his breath.
The Araucanian shrugged his shoulders.
“We’ll be ages waiting for him to come out, unless, of course, we dynamite the grille. We can’t starve him out, all he needs is fish and there’s plenty of that.”
“Do you think, Baltasar, there might be another way out of the cave – inland I mean?”
Baltasar hadn’t thought of that.
“It’s an idea though. Why didn’t we have a look round first,” said Zurita.
So he started on a new search.
On shore Zurita came across a high solid white-stone wall and followed it round. It completely encircled a piece of land, no less than twenty-five acres. There was only one gate, made of solid steel plates. In one corner of it there was a small steel door with a spy-hole shut from inside.
A regular fortress, thought Zurita. Very fishy. The farmers round here don’t normally build high walls. And not a chink anywhere to have a peep through.
There was not a sign of another habitation in the immediate neighbourhood, just bald grey rocks, with an occasional patch of thorny bush and cactus, all the way down to the bay.
Zurita’s curiosity was roused. For two days he haunted the rocks round the wall, keeping a specially sharp eye on the steel gate. But nobody went in or out, nor did a single sound come from within.
One evening, on board the Jellyfish, Zurita sought out Baltasar.
“Any idea who lives in the fortress above the bay?” he asked.
“Salvator-so the Indian farm-labourers tell me.”
“And who’s he?”
“God.”
The Spaniard’s bushy black eyebrows invaded his forehead.
“Having your joke, eh?”
A faint smile touched the Indian’s lips.
“I’m telling you what I’ve been told. Many Indians call Salvator a God and their saviour.”
“What does he save them from?”
“Death. He’s all-powerful, they say. He can work miracles. He holds life and death in the hollow of his hand, they say. He makes new, sound legs for the lame, keen eyes for the blind, he can even breathe life into the dead.”
“Carramba! “ muttered Zurita, as he flicked up smartly his bushy moustache. “There’s a ‘sea-devil’ down the bay, and a ‘god’ up it. I wonder if they’re partners.”
“If you take my advice we’ll clear out of here, and mighty quick, before our brains curdle with all these miracles.”
“Have you seen anyone who was treated by Salvator?”
“I have. I was shown a man who had been carried to Salvator with a broken leg. He was running about like a mustang. Then I saw an Indian whom Salvator had brought back to life. The whole village say that he was stone-dead with a split skull. Salvator put him on his feet again. He came back, full of life and laughter. Got married to a nice girl too. And then all those children-”
“So Salvator does receive patients?”
“Indians. They flock to him from everywhere-from as far away as Tierra del Fuego and the Amazon.”
Not satisfied with this information Zurita went up to Buenos Aires.
There too he learned that Salvator treated only Indians with whom he enjoyed the fame of a miracle-worker. Medical men told Zurita that Salvator was an exceptionally gifted surgeon, indeed a man of genius, but very eccentric, as is often the case with men of his calibre. His name was well known in medical circles on both sides of the Atlantic. In America he was famed for his bold imaginative surgery. When surgeons gave up a case as hopeless Salvator was asked to step in. He never refused. During the Great War he was on the French front where he operated almost exclusively on the brain. Thousands of men owed him their lives. After the Armistice he went back home. His practice and real estate operations landed in his lap quite a fortune. He threw up his practice, bought some land near Buenos Aires, had a high wall built round it (another of his eccentricities), and settled down there. He was known to have taken up research. Now he only treated Indians, who called him God descended on earth.
Finally Zurita found out that before the War right where his present vast holding lay Salvator had had a house with an orchard also walled in on all sides. When Salvator had been away in France the house had been closely guarded by a Black and a pack of ferocious bloodhounds.
Of late Salvator had lived a still more cloistered life. He wouldn’t receive even his old university colleagues.
Having gleaned all this information, Zurita decided to take illness so as to get inside the grounds.
Once again he was in front of the stout steel gate guarding Salvator’s property. He rapped on the gate. Nobody answered. He kept rapping on it for some time and still there was not a stir inside. His blood up, Zurita picked up a stone and started battering the gate, raising a din fit to wake the dead.
Dogs barked somewhere well inside and at last the spy-hole was slid open.
“What do you want?” a voice asked in broken Spanish.
“A sick man to see the doctor-hurry up now, open the door.”
“Sick men do not knock in this way,” came the placid rejoinder and an eye peeped through at Zurita. “Doctor’s not receiving.”
“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