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

There was a rustle and stir among the reeds, and Dick and Dorothea saw the boy they had met in the train come out, looking rather shy and bothered, close by the pug's gangplank.
'Were you lurking all the time?' said Dorothea.
'You?' said Mrs Barrable. 'We've seen you once before today.'
'Twice,' said Dick. 'Once in the train, and once when he was cooking in his boat.'
'That was most awfully decent of you,' said Tom, 'sending them off like that.'
'Well,' said Mrs Barrable, 'it was five to one, wasn't it? But what was it all about? And what have you done with your boat? And why did you put my mud anchor overboard?'
'It was the only thing I could think of that would be heavy enough,' said Tom. 'You see, I had to sink her.'
'Sink her?' Mrs Barrable exclaimed. They all looked down into the brown water. 'Do you mean to say your boat was here right under our feet all the time those people were talking?'
'She went down all right,' said Tom, 'once I got her properly under.'
'But how will you get her up again?'
'She'll come when the mud-weight's lifted. And anyhow I hitched the painter to your rope. She'll come all right. But I'm very sorry. You know I didn't think there was anybody aboard. There was no pug on deck, and there usually is. And I knew I wouldn't be doing any harm to the anchor. Just for half an hour till those Hullabaloos had gone by. There wasn't time to do anything else. I could hear them already ...'
'Hullabaloos?' said Mrs Barrable. 'What a very good name for them. But what had you done to them? And don't you think they may be coming back any minute? It wouldn't look well for them to find you here. Come inside and wait till we can be sure they are not turning round again. No, William.
No! Friend! Friend! But what had you done to them? Whatever it was, I expect they deserved it...'
The noise of the Margoletta was now far away, but it could still be heard, and it would certainly be awkward if the Hullabaloos came back and found him where he was.
'I can stay hid in the reeds,' said Tom.
'But we want to hear about it,' said Mrs Barrable, 'and I don't want to have to hide in the reeds while I listen. Much better come inside."
Tom looked anxiously at the anchor rope that disappeared into the water at his feet. It was just as he had left it. The Dreadnought was all right down there at the bottom of the river. She could be taking no harm. He followed Mrs Barrable down into the well.
'And now,' said Mrs Barrable, when they were all in the well and under cover, including William, who was slowly changing his mind about Tom, 'do tell us what it was all about. But, of course, you needn't if you don't want to.'
'It was birds,' said Tom.
'Herons?' broke in Dick, who had spent a lot of time watching one on the opposite bank during the afternoon.
'Coots,' said Tom. 'You see, the birds are nesting now, and when people like that go and shove their boat on top of a nest anything may happen. And this is our particular coot. She's got a white feather on one wing. We've been watching the nest from the very beginning. An early one. And the eggs are just on the very edge of hatching. And then those Hullabaloos moored clean across the opening where the nest is, and frightened the coots off. Something simply had to be done.'
'I can quite understand that,' said Mrs Barrable. 'But what was it you did?'
'Well, they wouldn't move when they were asked,' said Tom.
'Who asked them?'
'The Bird Protection Society,' said Tom.
'But how did they come to know about it?'
'They were down this way inspecting, because I was up the river and Port and Starboard had to be racing. You must have seen them, I should think. Three of them, in an old black boat.'
'We saw them,' cried Dorothea delightedly.
'Oh,' said Mrs Barrable. 'The pirates ... turbans, knives in their belts ... We all saw them.'
'Well,' said Tom, 'you can't expect them to be Bird Protectors all the time.'
'Of course not,' said Mrs Barrable.
'They asked them to go, and they wouldn't, and then, when they found it was no good being polite to Hullabaloos, they came and reported to the Coot Club, the rest of us, at Horning, I mean, and luckily my old punt was in the water. So I came down. They were making such an awful noise, they never heard me put their anchors aboard and push them off. The coots'll be back by now if they haven't been frightened into deserting altogether.'
'Urn,' said Mrs Barrable, 'I'm glad I'm not moored on the top of somebody's nest. I shouldn't at all like to find myself drifting downstream.'
'But it wouldn't ever happen to you,' said Tom. 'You wouldn't be beastly like they were if somebody came and explained that there were eggs just going to hatch.'
'I think it was splendid,' said Dorothea.
'They sounded very unpleasant people,' said Mrs Barrable.
But Tom was looking rather grirn. Somehow it sounded awful, casting loose those Hullabaloos, when Mrs Barrable said how much she would dislike finding herself adrift. He told Mrs Barrable that he ought to go. They listened.
'They've gone right down the river," said Mrs Barrable, 'or we'd be able to hear them whether their engine was running or not.'
Tom hurried along to the Teasel's foredeck. Dick and Dorothea hurried after him. Already he was hauling up the Teasel's mud-weight. Up it came, with the painter fast to the rope above it, and after it, with a tremendous stirring of mud, the Dreadnought herself rose slowly through the water, like a great shark. Up she came, and lay waterlogged, now one end of her and now the other lifting an inch above the surface.

CHAPTER 6
PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE
Tom paddled the Dreadnought up the river. Considering that she was a flat-bottomed, home-made punt, she really was fairly steady, but, on the whole, he thought it safer not to turn round and wave good-bye. She was very wet and rather slimy after being at the bottom of the river, and Tom was content to be able to keep his balance and to keep her going at the same time. He was still feeling the narrowness of his escape from the Hullabaloos. Things had certainly turned out much better than had seemed likely. How lucky that the Teasel had been moored there. How lucky, too, that the little old lady had taken his boarding of her yacht in the way she had. Why, she had played up against those Hullabaloos almost as if she had had a share herself in clearing them away from the coot's nest.
He slowed down as he came near No. 7. One great advantage of paddling a punt is that you face the way you are going. Tom, as he paddled, was searching the side of the river opposite the little opening that the coots had chosen. He was looking for round black shadows stirring on that golden water under the reeds. He saw only the broad bulging ripple of a water-rat. No. At least the coots were no longer scuttering up and down in terror as he had seen them last. Quietly he edged the old punt over towards the other bank so as to be able to look into the opening as he passed it. There was an eddy here or nearly dead water, and Tom never lifted his paddle high enough to drip. He slid by as silently as a ghost.
He knew exactly where to look into the shadows. There was the clump of reeds, and there at the base of them, among them, the raised platform of the nest. Was it deserted? Or not? Tom peered through the twilight. No. It was as if the centre of the nest was capped with a black dome, and on the dome he had just seen the white splash of a coot's forehead. And what was that other shadow working along close under the bank? It was enough. Tom did not want to frighten them again. He paddled quietly on. One thing was all right, anyhow. The coots of No. 7 were at home once more.
It was growing dark now. Nobody but Tom was moving on the river, and the only noise was the loud singing of the birds on both banks and over the marshes, whistling blackbirds, throaty thrushes, starlings copying first one and then the other, a snipe drumming overhead. Everything was all right with everybody. And then a pale barn owl swayed across the river like a great moth, and with her, furiously chattering, a little crowd of small birds, for whom the owl was nothing but an enemy. And suddenly into Tom's head came a picture of the Margoletta as a hostile owl, mobbed by a lot of small birds, the Death and Glories and himself.
And Tom, remembering what he had seen and heard while he was lurking in the reeds beside the Teasel, knew that the Hullabaloos of the Margoletta were very angry indeed. He had made enemies of them. They had not sounded at all as if they were the kind of people who would forget what had happened or forgive it. And what if they found out who he was and went and made a row about it? The doctor's son casting loose a moored boat full of perfect strangers ... His cheeks went hot at the thought. But at least no one who knew him had seen him ... and then, suddenly, Tom remembered George Owdon lounging on the ferry-raft when he had been paddling the Dreadnought on his way to the rescue of No. 7. Would George tell? Hardly. George was a beast, but, after all, he was a Norfolk coot, like the rest of them, though, of course, not a member of the Coot Club, which was an affair of Tom and the twins. No, not even George Owdon would do a thing like that But, as he paddled on and on up the river, Tom grew more and more bothered about what had happened. It had come about so quickly. What ought he to have done? Let No 7 be ruined at the last moment, after all that watching and the careful way in which the coots had fought the floods by building up their nest? Again he saw those anxious scutterings at the far side of the river. He could not have allowed them to be kept off their eggs until it was too late. What else could he have done?

CHAPTER 7
INVITATION