Читать онлайн «Island Of The Blue Dolphins»

PUFFIN BOOKS

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Scott O'Dell was born in Los Angeles and lived with his wife at Stoneapple Farm, Julian, an 1870 gold-mining town in the mountains east of San Diego. Though his great-grandfather was a first cousin of Sir Walter Scott, Scott O'Dell's literary reputation is based solely on the success of his own books. He was a newspaperman and an authority on California history. He won many awards for his writing throughout the world, including the Newbery Award for Children's Literature for Island of the Blue Dolphins. Scott O'Dell was was the author of Country of the Sun, an informal history of Southern California, and Hill of the Hawk, which is considered the best historical novel of the region. He died in October 1989.

1

I remember the day the Aleut ship came to our island. At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings. At last in the rising sun it became what it really was — a red ship with two red sails.

My brother and I had gone to the head of a canyon that winds down to a little harbour which is called Coral Cove. We had gone to gather roots that grow there in the spring.

My brother Ramo was only a little boy half my age, which was twelve. He was small for one who had lived so many suns and moons, but quick as a cricket. Also foolish as a cricket when he was excited. For this reason and because I wanted him to help me gather roots and not go running off, I said nothing about the shell I saw or the gull with folded wings.

I went on digging in the brush with my pointed stick as though nothing at all were happening on the sea. Even when I knew for sure that the gull was a ship with two red sails.

But Ramo's eyes missed little in the world. They were black like a lizard's and very large and, like the eyes of a lizard, could sometimes look sleepy. This was the time when they saw the most.

This was the way they looked now. They were half-closed, like those of a lizard lying on a rock about to flick out its tongue to catch a fly.

‘The sea is smooth,’ Ramo said. ‘It is a flat stone without any scratches. ’

My brother liked to pretend that one thing was another.

‘The sea is not a stone without scratches,’ I said. ‘It is water and no waves. ’

‘To me it is a blue stone,’ he said. ‘And far away on the edge of it is a small cloud which sits on the stone. ’

‘Clouds do not sit on stones. On blue ones or black ones or any kind of stones. ’

‘This one does. ’

‘Not on the sea,’ I said. ‘Dolphins sit there, and gulls, and cormorants, and otter, and whales too, but not clouds. ’

‘It is a whale, maybe. ’

Ramo was standing on one foot and then the other, watching the ship coming, which he did not know was a ship because he had never seen one. I had never seen one either, but I knew how they looked because I had been told.

‘While you gaze at the sea,’ I said, ‘I dig roots. And it is I who will eat them and you who will not. ’