"Ransome, Arthur - Swallows and Amazons 05 - Coot Club 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ransome Arthur)
'Does she sleep two?'
'There's room for two,' said Tom. 'One each side of the centre-board. But I've only had her fitted for sleeping these last two nights. She isn't really finished yet.' He turned back the awning to let Mrs Barrable see inside. 'Those lockers are all going to have doors.'
And then suddenly Mrs Barrable turned to the business that had brought her to the doctor's house. She told them how her brother had been coming to the Broads for some years and how this year he had chartered the Teasel, meaning to take his sister for a cruise right through Yarmouth and up to Beccles, where they had been children together, and round to Oulton and up the Norwich river [The River Yare]. She told them how, after a week on the Bure and at Hickling, he had suddenly had to go off, and how she had invited Dick and Dorothea to come and keep her company in the Teasel. 'But what I didn't know,' she said, 'was that the two of them had set their hearts on learning to sail. And, of course, they're dreadfully disappointed ... No, no. They don't say so. If they did I shouldn't feel so bad about it. I'm rather disappointed, too. I'd been looking forward to seeing Breydon again, and sailing in to Waveney and the Yare ... Now, how would the three of you care to come and sail the Teasel for us? I know Tom knows how to sink a boat.'
'Sail her?' said Tom.
'Take her down to the southern rivers and back,' said Mrs Barrable. 'Just to let those two children feel they'd seen something of the Broads. And you'd have to teach them a little first, so that they wouldn't feel they were only passengers.'
Tom looked down at the Titmouse, at the new awning, and the lockers. Black treachery it would be, to leave her for the Teasel.
'I've thought it all out,' said Mrs Barrable. 'You'd have to bring the Titmouse or we shouldn't have enough sleeping room at night. If you could do with Dick in the Titmouse, we four will have the Teasel to ourselves ... two cabins, one for the twins, and Dorothea will share the other with me. Two or three days' practice first in the easy waters up here, I thought, and then away for a cruise so as to be back in time to send them home before the end of the holidays.' 'The Teasel's a splendid boat,' said Tom. For one moment the twins' eyes lit like his at the thought of such a voyage in charge, in actual command, of such a vessel. Then they remembered.
'We'd simply love to,' said Starboard, 'but we can't ... really can't. You see there's a race tomorrow, and then another one, and father's entered Flash for five races the last week of the holidays, and he's arranging to get back early each day on purpose.'
'You try to persuade them, Tom,' said Mrs Barrable. But Tom knew the twins too well. 'It's no use,' he said. 'They won't be able to come ... And I can't either, after last night. At least not so long as those people are about.'
But Mrs Barrable was not to be refused. She had seen the light in Tom's eye and in the eyes of the twins. She knew that all three of them wanted to come.
'They won't know you except in your punt,' she said. 'And we can always hide you, besides, they'll have forgotten about it by now ... Anyhow, come along the three of you this afternoon and see what sort of a crew you think you could make of my visitors. I'll expect you soon after lunch.'
'Dick's pretty keen on birds,' said Tom. 'And he doesn't collect eggs. And I could hop ashore if we heard those people coming.'
It was a queer way of accepting an invitation for the afternoon, but what it meant was clear enough.
'We'd love it,' said the twins, and then Mrs Barrable said that she had a few more things to do, was welcomed into her dinghy by a barking William, and rowed away towards the village.
Mrs Barrable, rowing steadily, with William sitting up in the stern of the dinghy, was almost out of sight beyond the boat-building yards when, suddenly, all three Coots turned and listened.
'The Margoletta,' whispered Tom.
In a moment there was no one to be seen on the green lawn in front of the doctor's house. The three Coots, crouching among the willows, were looking out through the tall reeds.
A big motor-cruiser had turned the corner above the Ferry and was thundering up the river with a huge gramophone open and playing on the roof of the forecabin. Two gaudily dressed women were lying beside it, and three men were standing in the well between the cabins. All three were wearing yachting-caps. One was steering and the other two were using binoculars and seemed to be searching the banks as the cruiser came upstream at a tremendous pace.
'They're looking for the Dreadnought,' whispered Tom.
CHAPTER 8
THE INNOCENTS
Mrs Barrable had seen the big cruiser coming and had made ready for it, but she was nearly swamped when it swept by her, the people in it turning round to laugh at the sight of the little dinghy tossing like a cork in the swirling water. She comforted William, who had not liked being thrown about, and rowed on to the staithe. The Margoletta was already tied up there when Mrs Barrable, looking over her shoulder, saw the Death and Glory, the old black ship's boat with its crew of three small boys, coming round the bend by the Swan Inn. There was no chance of warning them. She saw the two rowers turn to look at the Margoletta. She saw them hesitate, and then, as if they had nothing whatever to fear, row calmly on and moor at the staithe a little above the cruiser. The three men from the cruiser leapt ashore, and before the small Coots had time to change their minds and bolt for it, were already within reach.
'That's the one. The biggest of them. We'll teach you to come casting offother people's ropes and anchors,' said a big, red-haired man, suddenly shooting out an arm and catching Joe by the collar of his coat.
Mrs Barrable tied up her dinghy and walked quietly towards them. But Joe seemed well able to look after himself. He flung his arms suddenly upward and, with a single wriggle, left his coat in the hands of the enemy.
'Catch him, one of you,' shouted the red-haired man. 'Don't let him go. Grab him, James!'
'Catch him yourself, Ronald!' said one of the others.
'Look out for my coat,' urged Joe, skipping backwards a few yards out of reach. 'It's got my rat in it.'
The red-haired man dropped the coat and reached again at Joe, who dodged.
'Rat!' shrieked a woman in orange pyjamas who had come ashore to see what was to be done to Joe.
There was a sudden interruption.
'What's all this?' a deep voice asked, pausing between the words. Mr Tedder, the policeman, had been digging in his little garden by the staithe, and hearing the noise had thrust his spade into the ground and hurried out, putting his coat on as he came.
'It's this boy,' said the red-haired man, setting his yachting-cap at a jauntier angle to impress Mr Tedder, who had seen too many yachting-caps to be impressed. 'The biggest of these three. He came along yesterday evening when we were all in our cabins, and unfastened our anchors and set us adrift. Wanton mischief, nothing else.'
'Set you adrift?' said Mr Tedder judicially. 'That won't do.'
'But I didn't,' said Joe. 'I couldn't. Why, last night...'
Mr Tedder looked at him. 'Why so you was,' he said at last. He turned. 'And what time do you say the offence took place?'
'Ten past five,' said the woman eagerly. 'I know it was, because I was boiling eggs, and looked at the clock just when Ronald shouted that we were floating down the river ...'
'Ten past five,' said Mr Tedder slowly. 'Why from five o'clock all these boys was doin' a bit o' weedin' in my patch, an' gettin' worrams for to make a bab ... for liftin' eels ... Couldn't 'a been this boy cast you adrift. Why, 'twas all but dark when they go home with their worrams ...'
'But I tell you we'd had them round earlier with some tale about a blasted bird.'
'They was in my patch at ten past five,' said Mr Tedder doggedly.
'It must have been some other boy,' said the thin man the other had called 'James'.
'Not these,' said Mr Tedder. ;You skip along, you three. No need to hang about the staithe.'
'And my coat?' said Joe.
He came warily forward and picked it up, put it carefully on and then pulled out of an inner pocket a large white rat, which sat on his arm, sniffed the air contemptuously, and looked about it with its round pink eyes.
'Take that thing away,' screamed the woman.
Mr Tedder pulled out a notebook.
'If you want to make complaint ...' he was beginning, when a quiet voice close beside him said, 'Officer!'
'Ma'am,' said Mr Tedder, straightening his back and turning sharply on his heel, to see a little old lady with a pug. Mrs Barrable had thought it time to intervene.
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