"Ransome, Arthur - Swallows and Amazons 05 - Coot Club 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ransome Arthur)

'Come and look at this,' cried Starboard.
'But there's no time to lose,' said Dorothea.
Dick could not speak and the others did not seem to hear her.
'Read what it say,' said Joe.
'But Tom's alone up the river,' said Dorotiiea.
'Just look at it,' said Port.
'Quick, quick!' said Dorothea.
'Read what it say,' said Joe. 'It weren't there yesterday, but I see it just now as soon's I tie up.'
Dick climbed out on the staithe and hurried across to the notice-board. Dorothea was almost run across the gravel by Port and Starboard, who helped her ashore together.
This was the notice they read:

REWARD
A reward will be paid to any person who can give information concerning the boy who on the night of April the twenty-second cast off the mooring ropes of the motor-cruiser Margoletta then moored to the north bank below Homing Ferry.
Applyto
(There followed a name and an address, that of Rodley's, the boat-letting firm who owned the cruiser.)

'Well,' said Starboard, 'nobody'll give them any information, anyway.'
'George Owdon might,' said Port.
'If he could talk to them,' said Starboard, 'but even he wouldn't like people knowing he'd done it.'
'Anyway, Tom'll have to look out. It's a good thing the Hullabaloos are away the other side of Yarmouth ...'
'But they aren't,' Dorothea almost screamed. 'We've been telling you. They're here.'
'Coming up the river,' said Dick. 'Stopped at the Ferry.' 'And Tom's up at Wroxham,' said Dorothea. 'They can't help catching him if they go on. And there was a boy talking to them.'
She described the boy.
That's George Owdon,' said Port.
Joe made half a move towards the Death and Glory.
'Pete and Bill away to Ludham,' he said. Not with the best of wills could he by himself get much speed out of the old ship's boat.
'We'll go up the river,' said Starboard. 'Where's Bill's bicycle?' asked Port.
'I can get it,' said Joe.
'You may catch Tom at Wroxham before he starts back.'
Joe was gone.
'You two'd better wait here. You can't go really fast in that dinghy. And we've got two pairs of oars. Besides we must have someone on the look-out here to know what they do. Come on, Port!'

CHAPTER 12
UNDER THE ENEMIES NOSE
It is a long way to row or sail in a small boat from Horning to Wroxham, but it is not much more than a couple of miles by road. In about half an hour from the time he left them, Dick and Dorothea heard the shrill 'Brrr ... brrr' of Joe's bell as he came flying round the corner by the Swan, jammed his brakes on so that his wheels skidded on the gravel, and flung himself off beside them.
'Missed him,' he panted. 'By a lot. Tom'd been gone long before. Must be half-way down by now. Has that cruiser gone up?'
'Not yet,' said Dorothea ...
'Here she come now,' said Joe, looking down the river.
With a big spirting bow wave, the noise of some huge orchestra turned on as loud as possible through the loudspeaker, and a wash that was tossing all the yachts and houseboats moored along the banks, the Margoletta was roaring up from the Ferry.
Long after she had disappeared the three stood listening to the noise of her. Somewhere up there were Port and Starboard racing against time. Somewhere up there was Tom in the Titmouse sailing down from Wroxham, knowing nothing of the danger that was thundering to meet him.
Port and Starboard had no need to talk. For years they had rowed that boat together. Port rowed stroke and Starboard bow, each with two oars. Port set a steady rate after the first minute or two. She remembered that they might have to keep it up for a long way. On and on they rowed, past the notice that tells you to go slow through Horning, past the eelman's little houseboat, up the long reach to the windmill and the houseboat moored beside it, on and on and on. And all the time they were listening for the unmistakable roar of the Margoletta, and at every bend of the river Starboard looked upstream hoping each time to see the Titmouse's little, high-peaked sail. They passed the private broad with the house reflected in the water. They passed the entrance to Salhouse where, on any other day, they would have looked in to see the swan's nest and the crested grebe's. And then they heard it. No other boat on all the river would try to deafen everybody else with a loudspeaker. No other had an engine with that peculiar droning roar.
'Too late!' said Port.
'But here he is!' cried Starboard.
There, close ahead of them was the little Titmouse, sailing merrily down the middle of the river.
'Look out, Tom!' they shouted. 'Look out! Hullabaloos! The Margolettal They'll be here in two minutes ... And nowhere to hide!'
Tom, in the Titmouse, was very much enjoying himself. He had seen the twins, when he stopped at Horning on the way up. Everything was settled and they were to join the Teasel early tomorrow morning and come for a two-day voyage. They would have to be home on the third day for the first of the championship races, but by that time, Tom thought, he and those two strangers ought to be able to manage the Teasel, with the Admiral to lend a hand if need be. He had made a fast passage of it, from Horning to Wroxham, by rowing wherever he had not got a fair wind. At Wroxham, the first man he had seen was the man whose business it was to look after the batteries in the boats belonging to the firm that owned the Teasel. Not a moment had been wasted, and while the man went off in a punt with the old battery, Tom had hurried to the enormous village store and worked through
the Admiral's shopping list, and then ate the sandwiches his mother had given him for his dinner while sitting on the cabin roof of a business wherry, Sir Garnet, and talking to Jim Wooddall, her skipper. He had forgotten all about outlawry and Hullabaloos. He was thinking of the voyage to the south, and Jim Wooddall was telling him how to make the passage through Yarmouth easy even for a little boat by waiting for dead low water before trying to go down through the bridges. Several times while they were talking, Jim Wooddall looked up at a notice that had been nailed that morning on the wall of the old granary where the wherry was lying. Tom never saw it, and Jim Wooddall said nothing about it, though he stepped ashore and read it again, after the man had come back with the new battery, and Tom had said 'Good-bye' and was sailing away down Wroxham Reach. If Tom wasn't going to speak of it, Jim Wooddall wasn't. He could put two and two together as well as any man. He had heard of questions asked by that young Bill from Horning about the people in the Margoletta. He had just come back from a voyage to Potter Heigham, where another small boy had asked him if he had seen the Margoletta anywhere about. He read that notice again, and looked at the disappearing Titmouse. Well, of one thing Jim was certain, and that was that if Tom had had anything to do with it, the other people were probably to blame. Foreigners anyway and not pleasant folk. Jim had been in Wroxham when there was that trouble about the Margoletta keeping the people in the inns awake all night. And if they were not to blame? Well, Jim Wooddall was Norfolk too. 'If a Norfolk boy done it,' he said to himself, 'those chaps can cover die place with paper before anybody give him away.' He was not in the least surprised, some time later, when Joe came panting down to the riverside on a bicycle, and asked anxiously for Tom, to find, after Joe had hurried off again, that the notice had vanished from the wall.
By that time Tom was far down the river. He had used his oars through the reaches most sheltered by the trees, had slipped out into Wroxham Broad and found a grand wind there, had slipped into the river again by the southern entry, and was sailing merrily along, thinking only of his little ship, when, suddenly, just as he was coming to a sharp bend in the river, a rowing-boat shot into sight, and he recognized Port and Starboard, whom he had left at home in Horning, pulling at their oars as if they were rowing in a race.
'Hullo!' he called.
The next moment they were both shouting at him. 'Look out! ... Hullabaloos! ... Here in two minutes ... Nowhere to hide! ...' Whatever was the matter with them? And then he heard it, too, the droning roar of an engine, and some tremendous voice shouting a comic song along the quiet river.