Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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He held up the pine torch, and its flaring light tipped with a lurid, weird, and uncertain glow his fierce, tawny, and repulsive visage, causing his cunning and almond-shaped eyes to gleam redly, like two carbuncles, from under their thick and impending brows, which were nearly as shaggy as the moustache that blended with his greasy and uncombed beard; and in the same light the head of Podatchkine's lance and the hafts of his sabre, dagger, and pistols glittered at times, being the only bright parts of his remarkably dingy costume.

"Is it you, Michail Podatchkine—and alone?" he asked surlily.

"Yes; even so, alone. Dost think I have the evil eye about me that you stare so, Nicholas Paulovitch?"

"God forbid!" replied Nicholas with a shudder, for this idea is the grossest and the greatest of all Russian superstitious; "but I expected two—yourself and another."

"Who told you so?"

"Olga Paulowna, my sister, who yesterday saw you at Krejko."

"True, I remember. Now listen, old friend and comrade——"