Last of the Conquerors [antikvár]

BOOK ONE So now the roller-coaster seas, the diet of soup and the smell of the ocean were behind us and we were here at last. I, for one, was glad. Leaning against the rail of the motionless ship, we looked across the water of the North Sea over which the sea gulls made graceful, soaring dips and dives against the eye-squinching brightness of the blue, big-clouded sky. Everything sparkled and shone in the sun; the air was cool and pleasant, and I thought happily of the feel of firm and unmoving land beneath the feet and knew with a sigh that we would soon be off the ship. A small boat putted across the water in the not far distance, a hatless, black-garbed German at its helm. We stared at the man because he was the first German we had seen, and he stared back, his blond hair fluttering behind him in the wind. We stared and he stared until he was a tiny speck upon a larger speck moving now soundlessly across the water. Across the water in the distance lay the long, bright-green finger of a peninsula jutting out from the German mainland. Turning, I pulled myself up on the canvas covering of a lifeboat and looked across the ship to the shore of the port they told us was called Bremerhaven. Near the water I saw the frames of now unused factories, here blue-gray, here rust-colored, their ventilators spinning still in the wind. The sun shone through smashed-out windows and holes in the walls punched in by bomb and bullet. To the left lay the newly green open plain, unblemished except for the occasional red-and-white bumps which were the houses. Far off, on the horizon, stretched the hills covered with trees. There were no people. 13