The words that I was about to utter died upon my lips, and a strange horror – a dreadful horror – came upon me. My sight had by this time become used to the gloom of the coach, and I could see with tolerable distinctness. I turned to my opposite neighbour. He, too, was looking at me, with the same startling pallor in his face, and the same stony glitter in his eyes. I passed my hand across my brow. I turned to the passenger on the seat beside my own, and saw – oh Heaven! how shall I describe what I saw? I saw that he was no living man – that none of them were living men, like myself! A pale phosphorescent light – the light of putrefaction – played upon their awful faces; upon their hair, dank with the dews of the grave; upon their clothes, earth-stained and dropping to pieces; upon their hands, which were as the hands of corpses long buried. Only their eyes, their terrible eyes, were living; and those eyes were all turned menacingly upon me!
A shriek of terror, a wild unintelligible cry for help and mercy (вопль ужаса, дикий, неразборчивый крик о помощи и милосердии), burst from my lips as I flung myself against the door, and strove in vain to open it (сорвался с моих губ, когда я кинулся на дверь и тщетно пытался открыть ее; to burst – лопаться; разрываться; взрываться; to fling – бросаться, кидаться, ринуться; to strive – стараться, пытаться).
In that single instant, brief and vivid as a landscape beheld in the flash of summer lightning (в этот-то особенный момент, краткий и живой, как пейзаж, увиденный во время вспышки летней молнии; single – одинокий; единственный, уникальный; to behold – увидеть, узреть), I saw the moon shining down through a rift of stormy cloud (я увидел луну, сиявшую через просвет грозовых туч; rift – трещина; расселина; разлом; щель; просвет) – the ghastly sign-post rearing its warning finger by the wayside (призрачный указатель, вздернувший свой предупреждающий палец у обочины дороги; ghastly – наводящий ужас, жуткий; мертвенно-бледный; призрачный; to rear – воздвигать, поднимать) – the broken parapet (сломанный парапет; to break) – the plunging horses (лошадей, замерших в прыжке; to plunge – устремляться, бросаться вперед или вниз) – the black gulf below (черную пропасть внизу; gulf – морской залив; бездна, пропасть). Then, the coach reeled like a ship at sea (затем дилижанс накренился, как корабль в море). Then, came a mighty crash (затем последовал мощный удар; crash – грохот, треск; авария, крушение) – a sense of crushing pain (чувство сильной боли; to crush – давить, дробить, мять; crushing – сильный, сокрушительный) – and then, darkness (и затем – мрак).
In that single instant, brief and vivid as a landscape beheld in the flash of summer lightning, I saw the moon shining down through a rift of stormy cloud – the ghastly sign-post rearing its warning finger by the wayside – the broken parapet – the plunging horses – the black gulf below. Then, the coach reeled like a ship at sea. Then, came a mighty crash – a sense of crushing pain – and then, darkness.
It seemed as if years had gone by when I awoke one morning from a deep sleep (казалось, что прошли годы, когда я проснулся одним утром от глубокого сна),