Срубить Дерево | страница 23



"She's down, Mr. Strong.- Она уже внизу, мистер Стронг.
I'm raising the line again."Я возвращаю вам шнур.
And then, in a shocked voice: "Did you cut yourself, Tom?"- И тут же испуганное: - том, вы что, порезались?
"No," Strong said.- Нет. - ответил Стронг.
"That's sap you're looking at."- Это сок дерева.
"Sap!- Сок!
I'll be damned!"Будь я проклят!
Then: "Suhre says it looks pink to him.- И немного погодя: - Сухр говорит, что он кажется ему розовым.
Blueskies, though, says it's a deep crimson. What does it look like to you, Strong?"Но Блюскиз утверждает, что он темно-красный, а каким видите его вы, Стронг?
"It looks like blood," Strong said.- Он похож на кровь, - ответил Стронг.
He swung around to the other side of the trunk, out of sight of the stub, and waited for the end of the line to come within reach. While he waited, he gave the next limb down a good reconnaissance, but he saw no dryad lurking in any of its bowers. By the time he was set-up for the next cut, some of his confidence had returned and he had half forgotten about the "blood." And then the second limb began its downward journey, and he saw the new "blood" oozing from the new wound, and he was sick all over again.А потом вниз отправилась вторая ветвь, и он снова увидел "кровь", сочившуюся из новой раны, ему опять стало плохо.
But not quite so sick this time: he was becoming inured.Но не так плохо, как прежде: он уже начал привыкать.
He severed and sent four more limbs down in quick succession. He was lucky on all of them: not a single one became hung up. You needed luck when you delimbed a tree from the top down rather than from the bottom up and for that reason the top-to-bottom method was never used except in rare cases such as the present one, where the nearest houses were so close that the utmost care had to be taken in removing the lower, longer limbs. As the utmost care could not be taken if overhead growth interfered with their being drawn straight back against the trunk, the easier bottom-to-top method was out for Strong. He was able to remove eight limbs before it became necessary to move the winch to the opposite side of the tree.До того как понадобилось переместить лебедку, ему удалось срезать восемь ветвей.
After the winch-shift he removed eight more.А когда лебедку установили с другой стороны дерева, он снял еще восемь.
An excellent afternoon's work in any treeman's book. At quitting time Wright made the traditional offer: