Льюис Кэрролл - Алиса в Стране чудес / Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Алиса в Зазеркалье / Through the Looking-glass, and What Alice Found There

The Lion joined them soon: he looked very tired and sleepy, and his eyes were half shut. ‘What’s this!’ he said, looking at Alice.

‘Ah, what is it?’ the Unicorn cried. ‘You’ll never guess! I couldn’t.’

The Lion looked at Alice thoughtfully.

‘Are you animal… vegetable… or mineral?’ he said and yawned at every word.

‘It’s a fantastic monster!’ the Unicorn cried out, before Alice could say anything.

‘Then hand round the plum-cake, Monster,’ the Lion said. He lay down and put his head on his paws.

‘And sit down, both of you,’ (to the King and the Unicorn): ‘fair play with the cake!’

The King felt very uncomfortable, because he sat down between the two great creatures; but there was no other place for him.

Alice sat down on the bank of a little brook, with the great dish on her knees. She tried to cut the cake. ‘It’s very strange!’ she said, ‘I’ve cut several slices already, but they always join on again!’

‘You don’t know how to cut Looking-glass cakes,’ the Unicorn said. ‘Hand it round first, and cut it afterwards.’

It was nonsense, but Alice got up and carried the dish round, and the cake divided itself into three pieces as she did so. ‘Now cut it,’ said the Lion, when she returned to her place with the empty dish.

‘I say, it isn’t fair!’ cried the Unicorn. ‘The Monster has given the Lion twice as much as me!’

‘She’s given none for herself, anyhow,’ said the Lion. ‘Do you like plum-cake, Monster?’

But before Alice could answer him, the drums began. She couldn’t understand where the noise came from. She got up and jumped over the little brook.

She looked back and saw, that the Lion and the Unicorn rose to their feet with angry looks that they were interrupted in their feast. Alice put her hands over her ears, trying not to hear the terrible sound of drums.

‘If that doesn’t “drum them out of town,”’ she thought to herself, ‘nothing ever will!’

After a while the noise disappeared, and Alice looked around. There was nobody, and her first thought was that she had a dream about the Lion and the Unicorn. But then she saw a dish near her feet. ‘So I wasn’t dreaming, after all,’ she said to herself, ‘or… we’re all part of the same dream. Only I hope it’s my dream, and not the Red King’s! I don’t like to be in another person’s dream.’

At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of ‘Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!’ and a Knight dressed in red, came galloping to her. When he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly: ‘You’re my prisoner!’ the Knight cried.

But Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the moment, because he fell down from the horse. When he was again in the saddle, he began once more ‘You’re my… ’ but here another voice cried ‘Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!’ and Alice looked round in some surprise.

This time it was a White Knight. He came up to Alice and fell off his horse just as the Red Knight had done. Then he got on again, and the two Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without speaking. Alice looked from one to the other in some confusion.

‘She’s my prisoner, you know!’ the Red Knight said at last.

‘Yes, but then I came and saved her!’ the White Knight said.

‘Well, we must fight for her, then,’ said the Red Knight and put his helmet on.

‘You will follow the Rules of Battle, of course?’ the White Knight said, putting on his helmet too.

‘I always do,’ said the Red Knight, and they began fighting with such fury that Alice hid behind a tree.

‘I wonder, what the Rules of Battle are,’ she said to herself, ‘if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse, and if he misses, he falls off himself… What a noise they make when they fall! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them as if they were tables!’

Another Rule of Battle was that they always fell on their heads. The battle ended when the both fell off their horses. When they got up, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight galloped off.

‘It was a victory, wasn’t it?’ said the White Knight.

‘I don’t know,’ Alice said doubtfully. ‘I don’t want to be anybody’s prisoner. I want to be a Queen.’

‘You will be a Queen, when you’ve crossed the next brook,’ said the White Knight. ‘I’ll help you to get to the end of the wood… and then I must go back. That’s the end of my move.’

‘Thank you very much!’ said Alice. ‘May I help you with your helmet?’ It was not very easy, but finally she took it off.

‘Now I can breathe more easily,’ said the Knight. He put back his hair with both hands, and turned his gentle face and large kind eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life. He was dressed in armour, which fit him very badly. And he had a strange little letter-box across his shoulder, which was upside-down. Alice looked at it with great curiosity.

‘I see you like my little box,’ the Knight said in a friendly tone. ‘It’s my own invention… I keep clothes and sandwiches here. You see I carry it upside-down, so that the rain can’t get in.’

‘But the things can fall out,’ Alice said. ‘Do you know that the lid’s open?’

‘I didn’t know that,’ the Knight said. ‘Then all the things have fallen out! And the box is useless.’ He was going to throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought came to him, and he hung it carefully on a tree.

‘Can you guess why I did that?’ he said to Alice.

Alice shook her head.

‘I hope some bees can make a nest in it… then I will get the honey.’

‘But you’ve got already a beehive… or something like it… on your saddle,’ said Alice.

‘Yes, it’s a very good beehive,’ the Knight said, ‘one of the best! But there are no bees. And the other thing is a mouse-trap. I think the mice keep the bees out [260] to keep someone out – не позволять, держать в стороне … or the bees keep the mice out, I don’t know.’

‘I don’t think there are any mice on the horse’s back,’ said Alice.

‘Perhaps,’ said the Knight: ‘but if they come…You see,’ he went on after a pause, ‘it’s as well to be provided for everything. That’s why the horse has all those bracelets round its feet.’

‘But what are they for?’ Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity. ‘Against the bites of sharks,’ the Knight said. ‘It’s an invention of my own! What’s this dish for?’

‘For plum-cake,’ said Alice.

‘We’d better take it with us, the Knight said. ‘It’ll be usefull if we find any plum-cake. Help me to put it into this bag.’

It took a very long time [261] It took a very long time – Это заняло очень много времени to do it. Alice held the bag very carefully, but the Knight was very clumsy: he fell in the bag himself instead several times.

‘It’s very difficult, you see,’ he said, as they put the dish in it at last; ‘There are so many candlesticks [262] сandlestick – подсвечник in the bag.’ And he hung it to the saddle, which was already full of bunches of carrots and many other things.

Alice and the Knight walked some time in silence. They stopped very often, and Alice helped the poor Knight, who was not a good rider. Every time the horse stopped, he fell off in front; and every time it went on again, he fell off behind.

‘I’m afraid you haven’t had much practice in riding,’ she said, when she was helping him.