Pokrewne

Start
Bierce, Ambrose Gwinnett The Parenticide Club
Dissensus On Politics and Aesth Jacques Ranciere
COOK GLEN Czerwone Zelazne Noce
[heft] Perry Rhodan 0621 Die Zeitkorrektur
CALLISON BRIAN Konwoj Stollenbe
bloodfever moning karen marie i
Dirk Pitt VII Operacja HF Clive Cussler
Barnett Jill Zyczenie
[heft] Perry Rhodan 1009 Agenten auf Mardi Gras
Cure fatale Robin Cook

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He had not known that he lived in so wild a region.There was something uncanny in the revelation.By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing.The thought of his wife and children urged him on.At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction.It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled.No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere.Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation.The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective.Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations.He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance.The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen.He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it.His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them.His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air.How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium.He stands at the gate of his own home.All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine.He must have traveled the entire night.As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him.At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity.Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms.As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!Peyton Fahrquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.ChickamaugaONE sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved.It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure; for this child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest—victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors’ camps were cities of hewn stone.From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter.In his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far South.In the peaceful life of a planter the warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished.The man loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was.This weapon he now bore bravely, as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver’s art.Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with illogical ease.But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied.Finding a place where some bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way across and fell again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary foe, putting all to the sword.Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to his base of operations.Alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like one, the mightiest, he could notcurb the lust for war,Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]