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

The harbour was almost deserted. The sun was hot on their faces, and they felt the warmth of the stone quayside strike at their feet through their sandal soles. In the centre, in front of tall wooden warehouse doors, the quay jutted out square into the water, and a great heap of empty boxes towered above their heads. Three sea-gulls walked tolerantly to the edge, out of their way. Before them, a small forest of spars and ropes swayed; the tide was only half high, and the decks of the moored boats were down below the quayside, out of sight.

'Hey,' Simon said, pointing through the harbour entrance. 'That yacht's come in, look. Isn't she marvellous?'

The slim white boat sat at anchor beyond the harbour wall, protected from the open sea by the headland on which the Grey House stood.

Jane said: 'Do you think there is anything odd about her?'

'Odd? Why should there be?'

'Oh - I don't know.'

'Perhaps she belongs to the harbour-master,' Barney said.

'Places this size don't have harbour-masters, you little fat-head, only ports like Father went to in the navy.'

'Oh yes they do, cleversticks, there's a little black door on the corner over there, marked Harbour-Master's Office.' Barney hopped triumphantly up and down, and frightened a sea-gull away. It ran a few steps and then flew off, flapping low over the water and bleating into the distance.

'Oh well,' Simon said amiably, shoving his hands in his pockets and standing with his legs apart, rocking on his heels, in his captain-on-the-bridge stance. 'One up. Still, that boat must belong to someone pretty rich. You could cross the Channel in her, or even the Atlantic.'

'Ugh,' said Jane. She swam as well as anybody, but she was the only member of the Drew family who disliked the open sea. 'Fancy crossing the Atlantic in a thing that size.'

Simon grinned wickedly. 'Smashing. Great big waves picking you up and bringing you down swoosh, everything falling about, pots and pans upsetting in the galley, and the deck going up and down, up and down -'

'You'll make her sick,' Barney said calmly.

'Rubbish. On dry land, out here in the sun?'

'Yes, you will, she looks a bit green already. Look.'

'I don't.'

'Oh yes you do. I can't think why you weren't ill in the train like you usually are. Just think of those waves in the Atlantic, and the mast swaying about, and nobody with an appetite for their breakfast except me ...'

'Oh shut up, I'm not going to listen' - and poor Jane turned and ran round the side of the mountain of fishy-smelling boxes, which had probably been having more effect on her imagination than the thought of the sea.

'Girls!' said Simon cheerfully.

There was suddenly an ear-splitting crash from the other side of the boxes, a scream, and a noise of metal jingling on concrete. Simon and Barney gazed horrified at one another for a moment, and rushed round to the other side.

Jane was lying on the ground with a bicycle on top of her, its front wheel still spinning round. A tall dark-haired boy lay sprawled across the quay not far away. A box of tins and packets of food had spilled from the bicycle carrier, and milk was trickling in a white puddle from a broken bottle splintered glittering in the sun.

The boy scrambled to his feet, glaring at Jane. He was all in navy-blue, his trousers tucked into Wellington boots; he had a short, thick neck and a strangely flat face, twisted now with ill temper.

'Look where 'ee's goin', can't 'ee?' he snarled, the Cornish accent made ugly by anger. 'Git outa me way.'

He jerked the bicycle upright, taking no heed of Jane; the pedal caught her ankle and she winced with pain.

'It wasn't my fault,' she said, with some spirit, You came rushing up without looking where you were going.'