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

He paddled swiftly and silently downstream. The Margoletta was adrift and moving. He could see into the little bay. He glanced across at the troubled coots. Another few minutes and they would be back at the nest. Unless, of course, they had been kept away too long already. He passed the cruiser and settled down to hard paddling. What a row those Hullabaloos were making. They still did not know they were adrift. And then, just as he reached the turn of the river below them, he heard an angry yell, and, looking back over his shoulder, saw the Margoletta out in mid-stream, drifting down broadside on, and on the open deck between the two cabins a man pointing at him and shouting, and, worse, watching him through field-glasses.
The thing was done now, and the hunt was up. Tom wished he had oars with outriggers in the Dreadnought, to drive her along quicker than he could with his single home-made paddle. He forced her along with tremendous jerks, using all the strength in his body. He had been laughed at for making that paddle so strong, but he was glad of it now. Already he was out of sight of the Margoletta, but she would be round the bend in a moment as soon as they got their engine started, and in this next reach there was nowhere to hide. He must go on and on, to make them think that the boy who had cast them loose had nothing to do with Horning, but had come from somewhere down the river. If only a nice bundle of weeds would wrap itself round their propeller. But it was too early in the year to have much hope of that. Yes, there it was. He heard the roar of the engine. They were after him. And then the roar stopped suddenly and there were two or three loud separate pops. Engine trouble. Good! Oh, good! He might even get right down to the dyke by Horning Hall Farm, where he had friends and could hide the old Dreadnought and know she would come to no harm.
On and on. He must not stop for a moment. He paddled as if for his life. Whatever happened they must not catch him. For everybody who did not understand about No. 7, he would be entirely in the wrong.
He thought of landing by the boat-house with the ship for a weather vane, startling the black sheep, and leaving the Dreadnought in the dyke below the church. But supposing the Hullabaloos were to see her, why, the first person they asked about her would tell them to whom she belonged. No, he must go much farther than that.
He was close to the entry to Ranworth Broad when he heard again the loud drumming of the Margoletta's engine away up the river. Too late to turn in there. The dyke was so straight. They would be at the entry long before he could get hidden. He paddled desperately on and twice passed small dykes in which he could have hidden the punt and then dared not stop her and turn back. Louder and louder sounded the pursuing cruiser. Would he have to abandon ship and take to the marshes on foot? And with every moment the thing he had done seemed somehow worse.
And then he rounded a bend in the river and caught sight of the Teasel. That yacht had been lying in that place for over a week. He had noticed her several times when sailing up and down inspecting nests for the Bird Protection Society. There was nearly always a pug-dog looking out from her well or lying in the sunshine on her foredeck. Tom had noticed the pug, but had never seen the people who were sailing the Teasel. At least for some time now they had not been sailing. Just living aboard, it seemed. And today it looked as if they had gone away and left her. The dinghy was there, but that meant nothing. There was no pug on the foredeck, and the awning was up over cabin and well. Perhaps the people were away on shore. And, at that moment, Tom had an idea. He could abandon his ship and yet not lose her. He could take to the reeds and yet not leave the Dreadnought to be picked up by the enemy. All those yachts were fitted out in the same way. Every one of them had a rond-anchor fore and aft for mooring to the bank. Every one of them had an anchor of another kind, a heavy weight, stowed away in the forepeak, for dropping in the mud when out in open water ...
Tom looked over his shoulder. The cruiser was not yet in sight, but it would be at any moment. Things could not be worse than they were whatever happened. His mind was made up. With two sweeps of the paddle he brought the Dreadnought round and close under the bows of the moored yacht. He was on deck in a flash with the painter in his hand. Up with the forehatch. There was the heavy weight he wanted. Tom lay down and reached for it and hoisted it on deck. He made his own painter fast to the rope by which he lowered die clumsy lump of iron into the punt. He wedged his paddle under the seat, and stamped the gunwale under, deeper, deeper, while the water poured in. The Dreadnought, full of water, and with that heavy weight to help her, went to the bottom of the river. Torn scrambled to his feet, jammed the hatch down on the anchor rope, and took a flying leap from the Teasels foredeck into the sheltering reeds.

CHAPTER 5
ABOARD THE TEASEL
Mrs Barrable was making little drawings in the margin of her letter and on her blotting-pad. This was a habit of hers and, when she was writing to the mother of Dick and Dorothea, it did not matter. Writing to strangers, she often had to copy her letters out all over again, because of the illustrations that had somehow crept in.
'Very nice children they are, my dear,' Mrs Barrable had written, 'and Dorothea is very like the little girl you used to be, but, you know, I should have been afraid to ask them here if I had known they both had such a passion for sailing... Of course, they want to learn and I fear they will find it very dull to be cooped up in a yacht that is moored to the bank and really no better than a houseboat with only an old woman like me to keep them company.' (Here she had let her pen run away with itself and there was a picture of a pair of lambs and an old woman in a poke bonnet all frisking together.)
Mrs Barrable drummed on her teedi with the end of her penholder and glanced through the cabin door into the canvas-roofed well, to see Dick earnestly wiping plates, and Dorothea, with a hand luckily small enough to get inside, scooping the tea-leaves out of a little tea-pot. What fun it would have been to take them round the old haunts, away down to Yarmouth and through Breydon Water and up the Waveney to Beccles, where she had been a child herself ... And then she looked out of the opposite portholes, and forward through the children's cabin. There was a porthole right forward, beside the mast, through which she could see a charming circular picture of the bend of the river upstream.
And just then, into that picture seen through the porthole, there came a boy in an old tarred punt, shooting round the bend of the river and paddling as if in a race. Instantly Mrs Barrable forgot everything else.
People in a hurry always interested her. She was always ready to take sides with anybody running to catch a train, and had been known to clap her hands when she saw someone make a really good dash for an omnibus. 'Good boy,' she murmured to herself, and waited to see him again when he should come paddling past the portholes on the opposite side of the cabin.
But he never came past those portholes at all. There was the faintest possible jar as he caught hold of the Teasel. There was a sudden, slight list, very slight, for Tom was not heavy, but enough to make Dick and Dorothea in the well wonder what Mrs Barrable could be doing. Mrs Barrable leaned forward again and, through that same round porthole by the mast, caught a glimpse of a rubber sea-boot on the foredeck. There was the faint but unmistakable noise of the opening of the forehatch, a fumbling with ropes, the shifting of a heavy weight, quick steps on the foredeck, a bump, a slow, sucking gurgle, the slam of the forehatch closing, a thud on the bank, the crackle of dry reeds and then, a few moments later, a tremendous salvo of barking from the watchdog, William, leisurely returning to duty.
Mrs Barrable pushed away the folding table and hurried out of the cabin. The washers-up looked at her in astonishment. Both were down on their knees stowing things away.
'What's happened?' asked Dorothea.
'What's the matter with William?' said Dick.
'I don't quite know,' said Mrs Barrable. 'A boy in a punt ...' She worked her way out from under the awning, expecting to see mat punt, or whatever it was, lying alongside the Teasel. But there was no punt at all. It had vanished, like the boy. And from behind the reeds there came the frenzied barking of the pug.
'William!' called Mrs Barrable. 'William! Come here!'
She went forward along the side-deck, steadying herself with a hand on the awning. There was wet on the foredeck. What could that mean? And a rope led from the forehatch over the side. Mrs Barrable lifted the hatch and looked down into the forepeak. Why in the world, when the Teasel was safely moored to the bank, should anybody want to anchor her with the mud-weight as well?
'William!' she called again, and William came out of the reeds, stopping on the gangplank to do a little more barking, over his shoulder, to show people that he was afraid of nobody and that a better watchdog did not exist.
'Quiet, William!'
Dick and Dorothea looked out with wondering faces. They, too, climbed out from the well.
'Quiet, William!' said Mrs Barrable. 'He must have been running away from something. Shut up, William! Listen!'
Yes. They could all hear that something was coming down the river. There was the deep, booming roar of a motor being run at full speed. Another of those motor-cruisers. A very loud loudspeaker was asking all the world never to leave him, always to love him, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, bang, bang, bang. And beside the loudspeaker there were other voices, loud, angry voices, not singing love songs but shouting at each other. There it was, a big motor-cruiser, coming round the bend.
William was now on the foredeck, but still looking behind him and barking at the reeds on shore. Mrs Barrable, her eyes sparkling, her mind made up, encouraged him, but pointed towards the motor-cruiser that was roaring down towards them. William was puzzled. Quick work, if that boy in the reeds had managed already to be out there on that noisy thing coming down the river. But he supposed his mistress knew, and anyhow he hated that kind of noise. So, with Mrs Barrable whispering 'Cats! William, Bad Cats!' into his ears, William faced the oncoming cruiser and put into his barking all he thought about boys who startled honest pugs by lying hid in reeds so that the honest pugs ran into them face to face on their own level. There was a good deal of noise, what with William, and the loudspeaker, and the quarrel going on among the people aboard the cruiser, who were all shouting to make themselves heard above the roar of their engine. Old Mrs Barrable, hiding her excitement, held William by the fat scruff of his neck, as if she feared he might leap overboard in his eagerness to tear to pieces the loudspeaker and its accompanists. Dick and Dorothea worked their way forward from the counter along the side-decks. What was happening? Dorothea was trying one story after another, but none seemed to fit.
Suddenly the quarrel aboard the cruiser seemed to come to an end. There was a furious shout from the man who was at the wheel. Everybody was pointing straight at Dick. The big cruiser swerved towards the Teasel. Her, engine was put into reverse and there was a frantic swirl of water as she lost way.
'What do you mean by it?' shouted the steersman of the cruiser.
But by now another of the Hullabaloos was pointing at the Teasel^s little dinghy lying astern of her.
That's not the boy,' he shouted, trying to make himself heard. 'Can't you see the boat, you ass? It wasn't like that. Bigger boat! longer! And that's a white boat. The other one was dark - a sort of punt.'
'It wasn't you turned us loose?' That was the steersman again.
'I,' said Dick. 'I...'
Mrs Barrable spoke. 'He has had nothing to do with you. He has been with me, moored here, the whole afternoon.'
'Oh. Have you seen a boy go by?'
'In a sort of long black punt.'
'Nobody's gone by since the racing,' said Mrs Barrable.
'Eh?' shouted one of the Hullabaloos.
'Do turn that thing off,' shouted another.
Everybody aboard the cruiser seemed to be shouting at once, and the loudspeaker was still begging all the world never to leave him, nor to deceive him, bang, bang, bang, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.
'It must have been one of those three guttersnipes this afternoon.' 'Bothering us about a beastly bird's nest.' 'Taking up our anchors and casting us loose.' 'All right. All right. I'll wring the little brute's neck.'
A girl in the gaudiest of beach pyjamas may have thought she was whispering to the man at the wheel of the cruiser, but she had to shout to be heard by him and what she said was just as clearly heard aboard the Teasel.
'No good talking to the old woman. He must have gone by.'
Mrs Barrable's eye hardened slightly.
'I shall be obliged to you if you will mind my paint,' she said, as the cruiser was coming dangerously near.
'Paint!' said the girl rudely, and then, shouting into the steersman's ear, 'Don't waste any more time. Let's buzz along. We'll catch him if you only get on. He can't have got very far.'
The engine roared again. The water at the stern of the cruiser was churned into foam. There was a heavy bump as her stern swung in and struck the Teasel, and the Margoletta went roaring, singing and quarrelling down the reach and out of sight. William, after giving a good imitation of a hungry lion being with difficulty held back from the savaging of helpless victims, turned round towards the reedy bank and barked once more.
Mrs Barrable also faced the reeds.
'They've gone on,' she said, in a very clear voice, though quite low. 'Hadn't you better come out and explain?'