"Cooper, Susan - Dark is Rising 01 - Over Sea, Under Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooper Susan)

One by one they slipped behind the wardrobe and through the little hidden door. Inside, it was at first very dark, and Simon, blinking, saw before him a wide-stepped ladder, steeply slanting, rising towards a dimly-lit square beyond which he could see nothing. The steps were thick with dust, and for a moment he felt nervous of disturbing the stillness.

Then very faintly, he heard above his head the low familiar murmur of the sea outside. At once the comfortable noise made him more cheerful, and he even remembered what they were supposed to be. 'Last one up shut the door,' he called down over his shoulder. 'Keep the natives at bay.' And he began to climb the ladder.



Chapter 3


As Simon's head emerged through the hatch at the top he caught his breath just as Barney had : 'Aah - aah -' and sneezed enormously. Clouds of dust rose, and the ladder shook.

'Hey,' said Barney protestingly from below, drawing his face back from his brother's twitching heels.

Simon opened his watering eyes and blinked. Before him and all round was one vast attic, the length and breadth of the whole house, with two grubby windows in its sloping roof. It was piled higgledy-piggledy with the most fantastic collection of objects he had ever seen.

Boxes, chests and trunks lay everywhere, with mounds of dirty grey canvas and rough-coiled ropes between them; stacks of newspapers and magazines, yellow-brown with age; a brass bedstead and a grandfather clock without a face. As he stared, he saw smaller things: a broken fishing-rod, a straw hat perched on the corner of an oil-painting darkened by age into one great black blur; an empty mousetrap, a ship in a bottle, a glass-fronted case full of chunks of rock, a pair of old thigh-boots flopped over sideways as if they were tired, a cluster of battered pewter mugs.

'Gosh!' said Simon.

Muffled noises of protest came from below, and he hauled himself out through the opening and rolled sideways out of their way on the floor. Barney and Jane came through after him.

'Simon!' said Jane, gazing at him in horror. 'You're filthy!'

'Well, isn't that just like a girl. All this round you, and you only see a bit of dust. It'll brush off.' He patted ineffectually at his piebald shirt. 'But isn't it marvellous ? Look!'

Barney, cooing with delight, was picking his way across the littered floor. 'There's an old ship's wheel ... and a rocking-chair ... and a saddle. I wonder if the captain ever had a horse? '

Jane had been trying to look insulted, but failed. This is something like exploring. We might find anything up here.'

'It's a treasure-cave. This is what the natives were after. Hear them howling with frustrated rage down there.'

'Dancing round in a circle, with the witch-doctor cursing us all.'

'Well, he can curse away,' Barney said cheerfully. 'We've got enough provisions for ages. I'm hungry.'

'Oh not yet, you can't be. It's only four o'clock.'

'Well, that's tea-time. Anyway, while you're on the run you eat little and often, because you daren't ever stop for long. If we were Eskimos we'd be chewing an old shoe-lace. My book says - '

'Never mind your book,' Simon said. He fished inside the ruck-sack. 'Here, have an apple and keep quiet. I want to look at everything properly, before we have our picnic, and if I can wait so can you.'

'I don't see why,' Barney said, but he bit into his apple cheerfully and wandered across the floor, disappearing between the high brass skeleton of the old bed and an empty cupboard. For half an hour they poked about in a happy dusty dream, through the junk and broken furniture and ornaments. It was like reading the story of somebody's life, Jane thought, as she gazed at the tiny matchstick masts of the ship sailing motionless for ever in the green glass bottle. All these things had been used once, had been part of every day in the house below. Someone had slept on the bed, anxiously watched the minutes on the clock, pounced joyfully on each magazine as it arrived. But all those people were long dead, or gone away, and now the oddments of their lives were piled up here, forgotten. She found herself feeling rather sad.

I'm ravenous,' Barney said plaintively.

'I'm thirsty. It's all that dust. Come on, let's unload Mrs Palk's tea.'

'This attic's rather a swizz,' Simon said, squatting on a crackling edge of canvas and undoing the rucksack. 'All the really interesting boxes are locked. Look at that one, for instance.' He nodded towards a black metal chest with two rusting padlocks on its lid. 'I bet it's full of the family jewels.'