every line of the blind bard's book to memory." He lifted the medal-strewn
lapel of his coat, left-handed. "The heart within this scarred breast," he
said, and thumped it, "still stirs to that noblest of stories, with its tales
of a valor to challenge the very gods, and of unstained martial honor that
endures . . . till death!" He waited
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file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt for applause. At
length it came, though not as warmly as he seemed to expect.
"I saw no contradiction in the lives of Homer's heroes and those of my beloved
Cherokees,"
Houston persisted. Behind him, the Greek's javelin sprouted the dangling
feathers of a hunting-
spear, and war-paint daubed his face.
Houston peered at his notes. "Together we hunted bear and deer and boar,
fished the limpid stream and raised the yellow corn. Around the campfire,
under open skies, I told my savage brothers of the moral lessons that my
youthful heart had gleaned from Homer's words. Because of this, they gave me
the red-man's name of Raven, after the feathered spirit that they deem the
wisest of birds."
The Greek dissolved, giving way to a grander raven, its wings spread stiffly
across the screen, its chest covered by a striped shield. Sybil recognized it.
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
It was the American eagle, symbol of the sundered Union, but the white-headed
Yankee bird had become Houston's black crow. It was clever, she decided,
perhaps more clever than it was worth, for two of the kinotrope bits in the
screen's upper-left-corner had jammed on their spindles, showing dots of
left-over blue; a tiny fault but annoying all out of proportion, like a bit of
dust in one's eye. Mick's fancy clacking was working the Garrick's kino very
hard.
Distracted, Sybil had lost the thread of Houston's speech. " . . . the brazen
cry of the battle-trumpet, in the camp of the Tennessee volunteers." Another
kino-portrait appeared: a man who looked rather like Houston, but with a tall
shock of hair in front, and hollow cheeks, identified by caption as GEN.
ANDREW JACKSON.
There was a hiss of breath here and there, led by the soldiers perhaps, and
the crowd stirred.
Some Britons still remembered "Hickory" Jackson, without fondness. To hear
Houston tell it, Jackson had also bravely fought against Indians, and even
been President of America for a time;
but all that meant little here. Houston praised Jackson as his patron and
mentor, "an honest soldier of the people, who valued a man's true inner worth
above the tinsel of wealth or show,"
but the applause for this sentiment was grudging at best.
Now another scene appeared, some kind of rude frontier fort. Houston narrated
a tale of siege, from his early military career, when he'd fought a campaign
under Jackson against the Indians called Creek. But he seemed to have lost his
natural audience, the soldiers, for the three Crimea veterans in Sybil's row
were still muttering angrily about Hickory Jackson. "The damned war was over
before New Orleans . . . "
Suddenly the limelight flashed blood-red. Mick was busy beneath the stage: a
tinted glass filter, the sudden booming of a kettle-drum, as little kino
cannons cracked gunpowder-white around the fort, and single-bit flickers of
red cannon-shell arched rapidly across the screen. "Night after night we heard
the Creek fanatics howling their eerie death-songs," Houston shouted, a pillar
of glare beneath the screen. "The situation demanded a direct assault, with
cold steel! It was said to be certain death to charge that gate . . . But I
was not a Tennessee Volunteer for nothing . . . "
A tiny figure dashed toward the fort, no more than a few black squares, a
wriggling block of bits, and the entire stage went black. There was surprised
applause in the sudden darkness. The penny-boys up in the Garrick's gallery
whistled shrilly. Then limelight framed Houston again. He began to boast about
his wounds; two bullets in the arm, a knife-stab in the leg, an arrow into his
belly -- Houston didn't say the vulgar word, but he did rub that area
lingeringly, as if he were dyspeptic. He'd lain all night on the battlefield,
he claimed, and then been hauled for days through wilderness, on a supply
cart, bleeding, raving, sick with swamp-fever . . .
The clerky cove next to Sybil took another lemon-drop, and looked at his
pocket-watch. Now a five-pointed star appeared slowly amidst the funereal
black of the screen, as Houston narrated his lingering escape from the grave.
One of the jammed kino-bits had popped loose again, but another had jammed in
the meantime, on the lower right. Sybil stifled a yawn.
The star brightened slowly as Houston spoke about his entry into American
politics, presenting as his motive the desire to help his persecuted pet [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]