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

'Busy man,' said Mrs Barrable. 'Come along, Dick. Written any more books, Dot? You really have done well in keeping your luggage down. We'll easily find room for these. I've got a boy with a hand-cart to take your things to the river. We're going down by water. Longer but more fun. There's a motor-launch going down to Horning, and the young man says he'll put us aboard. The Teasel's lying a good long way below the village. But we must have something to eat first, and I must get you some boots like those that boy was wearing. You'll want them every time you step ashore.'

CHAPTER 2
DISAPPOINTMENT
Never in all their lives had Dick and Dorothea seen so many boats. Mrs Barrable had taken them shopping at a store that seemed to sell every possible thing for the insides and outsides of sailors. She had taken them to lunch at an inn where everybody was talking about boats at the top of his voice. And now they had gone down to the river to look for the Horning boatman with his motor-launch.
Mrs Barrable saw the boatman waving to them. A minute or two later they were off themselves, in a little motor-launch, purring down Wroxham Reach. In the bows of the launch were the two small suitcases, and the parcels that had been sent down to the river by the people at the village store. Dorothea looked happily at one large, awkward, bulging parcel. Mrs Barrable had bought them cheap oilskins and sou'westers as well as sea-boots. There was no excuse for wearing such things on a fine spring day, with bright sunshine pouring down, but just to look at that bulging parcel made Dorothea feel she was something of a sailor already.
The houses came to an end. Here and there, looking through the trees, Dick and Dorothea caught the flash of water. Through a narrow opening they saw a wide lake with boats sailing in a breeze, although, in the shelter of the trees, the few sailing yachts they had passed had been drifting with hardly enough wind to give them steerage way. A little further down the river they caught a glimpse of another bit of open water. Then again they were moving between thickly wooded banks. Suddenly they heard a noise astern of them, and one of the big motor-cruisers that they had seen at Wroxham came roaring past them, leaving a high angry wash that sent the launch tossing.
'Just like real sea,' said Dorothea, holding on to the gunwale and determined not to be startled.
'They got no call to go so fast,' said the boatman. 'Look at that now. Upset his dinner in the bilge likely.'
The boatman pointed ahead at a little white boat tied to a branch of a tree. It was very much smaller than any yacht they had seen, hardly bigger, in fact, than the dinghies most of the yachts were towing. It had a mast, and an awning had been rigged up over part of it, to make a little shelter for cooking. The wash of the big cruiser racing past sent the little boat leaping up against the overhanging boughs, and a great cloud of smoke poured suddenly out. 'It's Tom Dudgeon,' said Dorothea. 'It's the Titmouse,' said Dick. 'There's the name.' The boatman slowed up the launch for a moment as they went by.
Tom Dudgeon, who had been kneeling on the floor to do his cooking, looked out with a very red face. They saw that he had a frying-pan in his hand.
He nodded to the boatman. 'Bacon fat all over everywhere,' he said. 'Oh, hullo!' he added, seeing Dick and Dorothea.
'Shame that is,' said the boatman as he put on speed again. 'Proper young sailor is Tom Dudgeon. Keeps that little Titmouse of his like a new pin.'
'Ah,' said Mrs Barrable. 'Now I dare say you can tell us who are the Port and Starboard he was talking about to the Wroxham station-master..."
'The station-master said they were queer names for girls,' added Dorothea.
The boatman laughed. 'Port and Starboard,' he said. 'We all call 'em that. Nobody call 'em anything else. Mr Farland's twins. All but sisters to young Tom, they are, what with Mrs Farland dying when they was babies, and Mrs Dudgeon, the doctor's wife, pretty near bring them up with her boy.'
They left the trees. The river was beginning to be wider, flowing between reed-fringed banks with here and there a willow at the water's edge. A fleet of five little yachts was sailing to meet them, tacking to and fro, like a cloud of butterflies.
'Racing,' said Mrs Barrable.
The boatman looked over his shoulder. 'If it's no hurry, ma'am, I'll pull into the side while they go by.'
'Of course.'
He shut off his engine and let the launch slide close along the bank until he caught hold of a willow branch to hold her steady. Dick caught another.
And then, as the first of the little racing boats flew towards them, spun round, and was off for the opposite bank, the boatman turned to Mrs Barrable.
'There's Port and Starboard, ma'am, if you want to see 'em. Fourth boat. Mr Farland gener'lly do better'n that.'
The second boat shot by and the third. The fourth came sweeping across the river. 'Ready about!' they heard the helmsman call, and the little boat shot up into the wind, with flapping sails, so close to the launch that Dorothea could have reached out and shaken hands with one of the two girls who were working the jib-sheets.
'He've good crew, have Mr Farland,' said the boatman, 'though they don't weigh as much as a man, the two of 'em together.'
'I don't believe they're much bigger than us,' said Dorothea delightedly.
'You'll be seeing 'em again,' said the boatman starting up his engine. 'They'll be going down river past your boat and back again before they finish by the Swan at Horning.'
'Your boat,' he had said. How long now before she and Dick were pulling ropes like those two girls, and listening for the word from Mrs Barrable at the tiller? Dorothea was planning a story. Why, if only she and Dick could sail like that, almost anything might happen. She looked at Dick. But Dick was busy with his pocket-book. In the winter holidays it had been full of stars, but with the year going on and nights getting shorter, birds had taken the place of stars. Heron, kestrel, coot, water-hen, he had already added to his list of birds seen, and just before meeting those racing boats he had seen a bird with two tufts sticking out from the top of its head, and only its slim neck showing above the water. He had known it at once for a crested grebe.
On and on they went down the river. They were coming now to another village. The launch slowed up. They were passing wooden bungalows and a row of houseboats. The river bent sharply round a corner. There was an old inn at the bend, the Swan. Then there was a staithe[A staithe in Norfolk is a place where boats moor to take in or discharge cargo: much what a quay is elsewhere.] with a couple of yachts tied up to it. Beyond the staithe were big boat-sheds, like those they had seen at Wroxham.
'This is Horning,' said Mrs Barrable.
'Our boat's not far now, is it?' said Dick.
'This is where Tom Dudgeon lives,' said Dorothea, 'and those two girls.'
The river went on bending and curling and twisting, and every other moment they thought they would be seeing their boat.
They came in sight of her at last and did not know her, a neat white yacht, moored against the bank, with an awning spread over cabin and well, as if she were all ready for the night.
'Oh, look, look!' cried Dorothea. But it was not at the yacht that she was looking. Working up the river was an old black ship's boat, with a stumpy little mast and a black flag at die masthead. Two small boys were rowing, each with one oar. A third, standing by the tiller, was looking through an enormous ancient telescope at something on the bank. The three small boys had bright coloured handkerchiefs round their heads and middles as turbans and belts. The launch was racing down the river to meet them, and in a moment or two, Dick and Dorothea were reading the name of the boat, Death and Glory, not very well painted, in big white letters, on her bows.
'You hardly expected to meet pirates on die Bure, did you?' said Mrs Barrable.
The boatman laughed. The steersman of the Death and Glory waved his big telescope as the launch went by, and die boatman waved back. 'Horning boys,' he said over his shoulder. 'Boatbuilders' sons, all three of'em. Friends o' Port and Starboard an' young Tom Dudgeon.'
But what was happening? The noise of the engine had changed. The launch was swinging round in the river towards that moored yacht. The loose flaps of the yacht's white awning stirred. A fat fawn pug clambered out on die counter and ran, barking, up and down the narrow side-deck.
'It's William!' cried Dorothea.
'Hullo, William!' said Dick.
'Here we are,' said Mrs Barrable. 'Poor old William must be tired of taking care of the Teasel all by himself.'
'She's ever so much bigger than she looks,' said Dick.
The parcels and suitcases had all been put aboard, the little dinghy had been tied up astern, the launch had gone, and Dick, who had been standing rather unsteadily on the counter of the yacht, had climbed down into the well to find himself in a comfortable sort of tent, full of light which poured through the white canvas of the awning.
Presently Mrs Barrable lit a Primus stove in die cooking locker in the well and put a kettle on to boil. Dick and Dorothea were watching the kettle, and Mrs Barrable was in the cabin, putting some paint-brushes to soak, when the noise of water creaming under the forefoot of a boat made them look out just in time to get a second view of the yacht race, as the five little racers sailed by. Port and Starboard and their father were now third.
'They've got time to win yet,' said Mrs Barrable. Twenty minutes later they saw them again, on their way back up the river. The folding table had been moved into the well, tea had been poured out, and Dick had been sent into the cabin to get William's chocolate-box from the little sideboard, when Dorothea, peeping out from the stern, saw the white sails moving above the reeds. In another moment the boats themselves were in sight, and Dorothea, Mrs Barrable and Dick hurried out on deck.
'They've done it,' cried Dorothea.
'Very nearly,' said Mrs Barrable.
'Flash, their boat's called,' said Dick, and Flash was second, and the steersman of the leading boat kept looking anxiously over his shoulder.
'Go it, go it!' cried Dorothea, and almost fancied that Port ... or was it Starboard? ... one or other of them, anyway ... smiled at her as the Flash foamed by. All five boats were out of sight in no time round the bend of the river above where the Teasel was moored.
And then, just after Dick and Dorothea had settled down to enjoy their first tea afloat, suddenly and altogether unexpectedly, the blow fell.