Jack London. The Sea Wolf (bilingual) -
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перекатывались через меня; я захлебывался и задыхался.
The noises grew indistinct, though I heard a final and despairing
chorus of screams in the distance, and knew that the Martinez had gone down.
Later, - how much later I have no knowledge, - I came to myself with a start
of fear. I was alone. I could hear no calls or cries - only the sound of the
waves, made weirdly hollow and reverberant by the fog. A panic in a crowd,
which partakes of a sort of community of interest, is not so terrible as a
panic when one is by oneself; and such a panic I now suffered. Whither was I
drifting? The red-faced man had said that the tide was ebbing through the
Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out to sea? And the life-preserver
in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment? I had
heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly
became saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I
was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness.
I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had
shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands.
Шум и крики становились все глуше; последний отчаянный вопль донесся до
меня издали, и я понял, что "Мартинес" пошел ко дну. Потом -- сколько прошло
времени, не знаю, -- я очнулся, и ужас снова овладел мной. Я был один. Я не
слышал больше голосов, криков о помощи -- только шум волн, которому туман
придавал какую-то таинственную, вибрирующую гулкость. Паника, охватывающая
человека, когда он в толпе и разделяет общую участь, не так ужасна, как
страх, переживаемый в одиночестве. Куда несли меня волны? Краснолицый
говорил, что отлив уходит через Золотые Ворота. Неужели меня унесет в