Сердца трех / Hearts of Three

Сердца трех / Hearts of Three
Джек Лондон

Бестселлер на все времена
Чтение оригинальных произведений – простой и действенный способ погрузиться в языковую среду и совершенствоваться в иностранном языке. Серия «Бестселлер на все времена» – это возможность улучшить свой английский, читая лучшие произведения англоязычных авторов, любимые миллионами читателей. Для лучшего понимания текста в книгу включены краткий словарь и комментарии, поясняющие языковые и лингвострановедческие вопросы, исторические и культурные реалии описываемой эпохи.

«Сердца трех» – это настоящий приключенческий роман. В нем есть все: погони и перестрелки, опасные приключения и коварные злодеи, древние сокровища и давние преступления. И конечно, любовь, которая обязательно победит все.

Книга предназначена для тех, кто изучает английский язык на продолжающем или продвинутом уровне и стремится к его совершенствованию.

Джек Лондон / Jack London

Сердца трех / Hearts of Three

© Поповец М. А., комментарии и словарь, 2016

© ООО «Издательство «Эксмо», 2017

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Читайте «Бестселлер на все времена» – погрузитесь в языковую среду с лучшими произведениями любимых авторов!

«Языковая компетенция – вещь капризная. Это как балет, как умение играть на музыкальном инструменте, как гимнастика, как любое действие, которое требует навыка. Либо вы идете вперед, либо начинаете сползать назад.

А самое главное – не прекращать изучение языка. Это может быть чтение оригинальной литературы. Любите читать про любовь – читайте про любовь, любите фантастику – читайте фантастику. Но читайте обязательно!»

    Н. А. Бонк, лингвист, педагог, автор наиболее популярных в России учебников английского языка

Back to Back Against the Mainmast

Do ye[1 - Ye – you.] seek for fun and fortune?
Listen, rovers, now to me!
Look ye for them on the ocean:
Ye shall find them on the sea.

CHORUS:
Roaring wind and deep blue water!
We’re the jolly devils who,
Back to back against the mainmast,
Held at bay the entire crew.

Bring the dagger, bring the pistols!
We will have our own to-day!
Let the cannon smash the bulwarks!
Let the cutlass clear the way!

CHORUS:
Bearing wind and deep blue water!
We’re the jolly devils who,
Back to back against the mainmast,
Held at bay the entire crew.

Here’s to rum and here’s to plunder!
Here’s to all the gales that blow!
Let the seamen cry for mercy!
Let the blood of captains flow!

CHORUS:
Roaring wind and deep blue water!
We’re the jolly devils who,
Back to back against the mainmast,
Held at bay the entire crew.

Here’s to ships that we have taken!
They have seen which men were best.
We have lifted maids and cargo,
And the sharks have had the rest.

CHORUS:
Roaring wind and deep blue water!
We’re the jolly devils who,
Back to back against the mainmast,
Held at bay the entire crew.

    George Sterling

Chapter I

Events happened very rapidly with Francis Morgan that late spring morning. If ever a man leaped across time into the raw, red drama and tragedy of the primitive and the medieval melodrama of sentiment and passion of the New World Latin, Francis Morgan was destined to be that man, and Destiny was very immediate upon him.

Yet he was lazily unaware that aught in the world was stirring, and was scarcely astir himself. A late night at bridge had necessitated a late rising. A late breakfast of fruit and cereal had occurred along the route to the library the austerely elegant room from which his father, toward the last, had directed vast and manifold affairs.

‘Parker,’ he said to the valet who had been his father’s before him, ‘did you ever notice any signs of fat on R. H. M. in his last days?’

‘‘Oh, no, sir,’ was the answer, uttered with all the due humility of the trained servant, but accompanied by an involuntarily measuring glance that scanned the young man’s splendid proportions. ‘Your father, sir, never lost his leanness. His figure was always the same, broad-shouldered, deep in the chest, big-boned, but lean, always lean, sir, in the middle. When he was laid out, sir, and bathed, his body would have shamed most of the young men about town. He always took good care of himself; it was those exercises in bed, sir. Half an hour every morning. Nothing prevented. He called it religion.’

‘Yes, he was a fine figure of a man,’ the young man responded idly, glancing to the stock-ticker[2 - Stock-ticker – устройство, автоматически обновляющее информацию о ценах на акции.] and the several telephones his father had installed.

‘He was that,’ Parker agreed eagerly. ‘He was lean and aristocratic in spite of his shoulders and bone and chest. And you’ve inherited it, sir, only on more generous lines.’

Young Francis Morgan, inheritor of many millions as well as brawn, lolled back luxuriously in a huge leather chair, stretched his legs after the manner of a full-vigored menagerie lion that is over-spilling with vigor, and glanced at a headline of the morning paper which informed him of a fresh slide in the Culebra Cut at Panama.

‘If I didn’t know we Morgans didn’t run that way,’ he yawned, ‘I’d be fat already from this existence… Eh, Parker?’

The elderly valet, who had neglected prompt reply, startled at the abrupt interrogative interruption of the pause.

‘Oh, yes, sir,’ he said hastily. ‘I mean, no, sir. You are in the pink of condition.’

‘Not on your life,’ the young man assured him. ‘I may not be getting fat, but I am certainly growing soft… Eh, Parker?’