Coot Club. Arthur Ransome

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. She’ll not have time for ’em all now, with a new young ’un of her own. Been as good as a mother to them two girls has Mrs. Dudgeon…. Steady now! … Did ever you see the like o’ that?” He swung his launch sharply aside to avoid a sailing yacht that was tacking to and fro and had suddenly gone about in mid-stream just after he had altered course to keep out of her way. “Probably never in a boat before,” said the boatman, “and in a week they’ll be laughing at the new-comers. A good nursery for sailing is the North River.”^*

      Dorothea looked happily at Dick, and Dick at Dorothea.

      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 a 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^* 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 launch stopped for a moment at one of the boat-sheds, and Dick and Dorothea looked eagerly at the yachts tied up there, wondering which of them was the Teasel. But they had stopped only to pick up the dinghy in which Mrs. Barrable had rowed up to the village that morning. They were off again, down a reach of the river that was almost like a street, with little old houses on one side and boats moored on the other.

      “That’s the doctor’s house, isn’t it?” Mrs. Barrable asked the boatman. “The one we’re just coming to, with the thatched roof. I remember my brother pointing it out to me.”

      “The one with a fish for a weather cock?” asked Dick.

      “He’s a fisherman, Dr. Dudgeon,” said the boatman, with a chuckle. “Put up that old bream himself. No much time for sailin’, I s’pose, bein’ a doctor, but you often see him fishin’ off his garden end when the season come on. And Mr. Farland live in the house next to it, t’other side of the dyke.”

      Mr. Farland’s house was further from the river, and Dick and Dorothea could see only the upper windows above the trees. But they saw his boat-house, and caught just a glimpse of the dyke between the two houses, a СКАЧАТЬ