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

'Hurry up, there, if you're going,' a porter shouted and at that moment, just after he had passed their window, the boy stumbled over a rope's end that had fallen from his coil. Down he went. His tin of paint rolled on towards the edge of the platform. His parcel burst its paper. Some blocks and shackles flew out.
The train had begun to move. A porter far down the platform was running towards the boy, who had jumped up again almost as if he had bounced, had grabbed his blocks and crammed them in his pockets, and had stopped the escaping paint-tin with his foot just before it rolled between the platform and the train. In another moment he had the tin in his arms and was running beside the carriage.
'Don't try that now,' shouted a ticket inspector.
'Wait for the next,' shouted the porter, who was running after the boy.
'Heads!' called the boy.
The next moment die paint-can came flying through the open window between Dick and Dorothea. The coil of rope whirled round and shot in after it. The door was opened and the boy flung himself in head-first and landed on all fours.
Dorothea pulled the door to. Dick said: 'They always like it shut,' and reached out and closed the handle.
The porter, left far behind, stopped running.
'Just in time,' said the boy. 'I didn't want to miss it. Lucky for me you had your window open."
'Haven't you hurt yourself?' said Dorothea.
'Not I,' said die boy, dusting his hands together, hands that looked so capable and hard-worked that Dick, at the sight of them, wanted to hide his own.
The train was running close beside the river, and diey saw a steamer going down from Norwich. They crossed a bridge, and there was a river on both sides of the line, the old river on the left curving round by the village of Thorpe widi crowds of yachts and motorboats tied up under die gardens, and, on the right, a straight ugly cutting. In anodier minute they had crossed the old river again, and the train was slowing up at a station. Close by, across a meadow, diey could see a great curve of the river, and three or four houseboats moored to the bank, and a small yacht working her way up.
'Interested in boats?' said the boy, as the odiers hurried across the carriage.
'Yes, very much,' said Dorothea. 'Last holidays we were in a houseboat frozen in the ice.'
'They're always getting frozen in, houseboats,' said the boy. 'Done much sailing?'
'We haven't done any at all,' said Dick. 'Not yet.'
'Except just once, on the ice, in a sledge,' said Dorodiea.
'It wasn't really sailing,' said Dick. 'Just blowing along.'
'You'll get lots of sailing at Wroxham,' said the boy, looking up at the big black and white labels on die two small suitcases.
'We're going to live in a boat,' said Dorothea. 'She isn't at Wroxham. She's somewhere down the river.'
'What's her name?' said the boy, 'I know most of them.'
'We don't know,' said Dorothea.
'Mine's Titmouse. She's a very little one, of course. But she's got an awning. I slept in her last night. And she can sail like anything. This rope is for her. Blocks, too. And the paint. Birthday present. That's why I've been into Norwich.'
Dick and Dorothea looked at die blocks and fingered the silky smoothness of the new rope. It certainly did seem that they had come to the right place to learn about sailing.
Dick and Dorothea had set their hearts on learning, but they had given up all hope of getting any sailing before the summer. And then, half-way dirough the Easter holidays, the letter from Mrs Barrable had come in the very nick of time. Mrs Barrable, long ago, had been their mother's schoolmistress, but she painted pictures and was the sister of a very famous portrait painter. And she had written to Mrs Callum to say that her brother and she had chartered a small yacht on the Norfolk Broads, and that her brother had had to go off to London to paint portraits of some important Indians, so that she was all alone in the boat with her pug-dog William, and that if Dick and Dorothea could be spared she would like to have their company. Everything had been arranged in a couple of days, and here they were, and already, before they had got to Wroxham, they had met this boy who seemed to know about sailing. Things were certainly coming out all right.
'Hullo,' said Dick, soon after they passed Salhouse Station. 'There's a heron. What's he doing on that field where there isn't any water?'
'Frogging,' said the strange boy, and then, suddenly, 'Are you interested in birds, too?'
'Yes,' said Dick. 'But there are lots I've never seen, because of living mostly in a town.'
'You don't collect eggs?' said the boy, looking keenly at Dick.
'I never have,' said Dick.
'Don't you ever begin,' said the boy. 'If you don't collect eggs, it's all right ... you see we've got a Bird Protection Society, not to take eggs, but to watch the birds instead. We know thirty-seven nests this year ..."
'Thirty-seven?' said Dick.
'Just along our reaches ... Horning way ..."
'Our boat's near there," said Dorothea.
'By the way,' said the boy, 'you didn't see two girls in this train twins? No? They were in Norwich this morning, but I expect they drove back with their father. Otherwise they'd have come this way. We always do. Going by bus, you don't see anything of the river worth counting.'
'There's a hawk,' said Dick.
'Kestrel,' said the boy, looking at the bird hovering above a little wood. 'Hullo! We'll be there in a minute.'
The train was slowing up. It crossed another river, and for a moment they caught a glimpse of moored houseboats with smoke from their chimneys where people were cooking midday meals, an old mill, and a bridge, and a lot of masts beyond it. And then the train had come to a stop at Wroxham station.
The strange boy was looking warily out of the window.
On the platform he saw an old lady looking up at the carriage windows. He also saw the station-master. He chose his moment and, slipping down from the carriage with his paint-can and coil of rope, was hurrying off to give up his ticket to the collector at the gate. But the station-master was too quick for him.
'Hum,' he said, 'I might have guessed it was you, when they rang me up from Norwich about a boy with a ticket for Wroxham jumping on the train after it had fairly got going. Told me to give you a good talking to. Well, don't you do it again. Not broken any bones this time, I suppose?'
The boy grinned. He and the station-master were very good friends, and he knew that the railway officials in Norwich had not meant him to get off so easily.
'I was on the platform in time,' he said. 'Only I was looking for Port and Starboard, and then I slipped, and the train started, and I simply had to catch that train.'
'Port and Starboard?' said the station-master. 'I saw them go over the road-bridge with Mr Farland more than an hour ago. They'll have had their dinners and be on the river by now ... Yes, madam. Let me give you a hand.' He was talking now to Mrs Barrable, the old lady, who had just found Dick and Dorothea. The station-master reached up to help Dorothea down with her suitcase.
'Well, and here you are,' said Mrs Barrable, kissing Dorothea and shaking hands with Dick.
'And who was that other boy?' she asked.
'We made friends with him in the train,' said Dorothea. 'He knows a lot about boats.'
'And birds,' said Dick.
Mrs Barrable watched him as he hurried through the gate and down the path to the road. 'Haven't I seen him before?' she said. 'And who are the Port and Starboard he was asking about?'
'That's Tom Dudgeon, the doctor's son from Horning,' said the station-master. 'You'll maybe have seen him on the river in his little boat. He's not often away from the water in the holidays. And Port and Starboard, queer names for a couple of girls ...' But there was the guard, just waiting to start the train, and the station-master never finished his sentence.