Затерянный мир / The Lost World - стр. 26
Their menace reflected in the faces of our coloured companions. I learned, however, that both Summerlee and Challenger possessed that highest type of bravery, the bravery of the scientific mind. It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it is devoted to science it has no room for other personal considerations. All day our two Professors watched every bird and every plant and argued a lot, with no sense of danger as if they were seated together in the smoking-room of the Royal Society’s Club in St. James’s Street.
About three o’clock in the afternoon we came to a very dangerous rapid, in which Professor Challenger had suffered disaster on his first journey. Before evening we had successfully passed the rapids, and made our way some ten miles above them, where we stayed for the night. At this point we had come not less than a hundred miles up the tributary from the main stream.
In the morning Professor Challenger started scanning each bank of the river. Suddenly he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and showed us a tree.
“What do you make of that?” he asked.
“It is an Assai palm,” said Summerlee.
“Exactly. It was an Assai palm which I took for my landmark. The secret opening is half a mile onwards upon the other side of the river. There is no break in the trees. That is my private gate into the unknown. Come on and you will understand.”
It was indeed a wonderful place. Having reached the spot marked by a line of light-green rushes, we carried two canoes through them, and found ourselves in a quiet stream, running clear over a sandy bottom. No one could possibly have guessed the existence of such a stream.
It was a fairyland… The most wonderful that the imagination of man could conceive. The thick branches met over our heads, creating a tunnel, in a golden twilight flowed a beautiful river. Clear as crystal, motionless as a sheet of glass. It was an avenue to a land of wonders.
All sign of the wild Indians had passed away, animal life was more frequent, everything showed that they knew nothing of the hunter. Little black-velvet monkeys, with snow-white teeth and gleaming eyes, chattered at us as we passed. Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from a gap in the bushes, and then went away through the forest; once we saw a great puma, its green eyes glared hatred at us over its shoulder. Bird life was in abundance, while beneath us the crystal water was alive with fish of every shape and color.
For three days we made our way up this tunnel of hazy green sunshine. The deep peace of this strange waterway was unbroken by any sign of man.