Читаю книжку про ужасы Африки.
"There being no trees in the vicinity, it occurred to him that his rifle might serve as a makeshift pogo stick, to be used as a sort of pivot to lift himself higher off the ground and make possible a look around. Behind him, all eyes were focused with great interest as the indomitable hunter went deftly about his work. He thought briefly of shouting to them for help in identifying the herd’s whereabouts, but his pride intervened.
He placed the rifle barrel at belt level, gripped the muzzle, and then bent his legs at the knee. He heaved himself up into the air with all the spring and strength at his command. Back on his feet all too soon, it was not clear to him if he had caught sight of them or not, so he immediately launched himself into the air for another look. To his everlasting regret, however, on his second try he lost purchase on the rifle, and his descent to earth met with tragedy.
No gymnast, the fearless white hunter plummeted down to land on top of his .416 Rigby, and the barrel entered his person not through any existing orifice but in the area known as no-man’s-land. The exquisite pain, however, was easily overshadowed by the horrendous embarrassment he instantly felt as he pitched forward, face down into the dirt, with a loaded elephant rifle firmly embedded in his rear. The clients and the trackers were aghast. They looked on, not sure what exactly they were seeing.
For Adrian, his thoughts were of Gina, what she would be making of this, and how to extricate himself from this most compromising of positions with the greatest possible speed. Being trampled by elephants now didn’t seem so bad.
“Shorty,” he shouted, trying at once to indicate a sense of urgency without letting on his level of desperation. He was also trying to limit his movements as much as possible, for the barrel in his bottom was painful.
The two trackers came hurrying to the rescue. As they neared, the impaled one had to work hard to suppress his inner panic. He implored them, in a calm voice, to “pull the bloody thing out, but watch out. It’s loaded.”
Shorty was very embarrassed for his bwana. A simpering, hangdog expression shrouded his wrinkled face. Disbelief sprang from his eyes. He stood there and shook his head.
“Pull it! Pull it! Pull it!” the embarrassed one hissed through gritted teeth.
Shorty moved reluctantly to the rear, looking down at the ground much as a golfer circles a difficult putt. In over forty years as a tracker, he had never been presented with such a novel problem. Never before had he been instructed to remove a rifle from a bwana’s bottom. Gingerly he lifted the rifle off the ground and followed the line of the barrel to confirm that the weapon was in fact stuck where he thought it was. Shaking his head forlornly, he gave a gentle tug, but nothing seemed to give.
“Shorty, pull it out!” was the louder exhortation, panic now creeping into his master’s voice.
“Careful, there is a round in the breech,” he said quietly and somewhat halfheartedly. It crossed his mind that the rifle’s discharging might not be altogether a bad thing. Death might well be the sensible route out of this mess. All the time he kept thinking of what Gina must be making of this most bizarre spectacle.
Shorty pulled harder, but still nothing gave.
“Pull!” Nothing.
“Pull!” Still nothing.
Then louder: “Pull! Pull! Pull!” he roared.
By this time the other tracker joined the struggle, and together the two were now dragging their esteemed bwana, face down across the ground by his rifle, firmly impaled in his posterior. In the course of this miserable translocation his worst fears were realized when he passed within feet of Gina. He looked up to see her studying him closely, coolly, contemptuously. It was as if she were asking herself, “What is this idiot doing?”
After traversing approximately 150 yards of the Luangwa Valley on his belly, Adrian gave the order to stop. The foresight of the barrel was obviously firmly imbedded, the rifle well and truly stuck. Now resigned to the most ignominious fate imaginable, he told Shorty to unload the weapon, which was done while the owner of the rifle held his breath in prayer. Then he told him to bring the vehicle.
At this point the lovely Gina approached.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly.
Such was his embarrassment that his face remained committed to the earth. Just why this unspeakable fate had been foisted on him was unclear, but if God would grant him one wish it was to be removed from her sight forever.
His plight became only slightly more bizarre when the Bussi family and the trackers combined forces to lift him into the back of the truck and place him face down, in preparation for the drive back to camp and on to hospital, four hours away. The drive would spare him nothing because the length of the rifle prevented the tailgate on the back of the truck from being closed, fully exposing him to a fascinated world from the rear of the car.
All along the way villagers caught the unusual sight of three clients in a vehicle with a white hunter lying in the back with a rifle sticking out of his ass. They waved, cheered, and clapped. He lay there and thought wistfully of dying" (с)