Читать книгу Children of the Wind онлайн

39 страница из 58

He was warmly thanked with nods, but no words, the sick mouth being covered with a cloth, the brow bound about with a towel, so that, as it was dim within the bunk, Rolls got only a dim impression of a nose.

Nor was there time to repeat the visit: now loomed on the ocean's brink that bluff bulk of Table Mountain, with a table-cloth of cloud, and silver dish-covers of cumulus-mounds, the mass of which, Rolls told Cobby, recalled to him "The Elephant" of Wo-Ngwanya; and soon, as the liner warped up, all was an arrival-scene of greetings and luggage, tips and kisses, pith-helmets with pugarees swinging, sunshades and white attire fluttering, all in a colonial tone of its own, dotted with various shades of blackness trotting to and fro, from Hottentot copper to Madagascar blacking; and here Rolls was sweetly at home, Cobby following in his wake from quayside through custom's officer to dock-gates, asking of Rolls in respect of the Malay who drove them to Cape Town, "Why does the being vociferate so needlessly?" to which Rolls philosophically answered: "Has a fare—sort of song of joy that he blows off, look, like the hylobates ape: let him howl away."