Winter Holiday. Arthur Ransome

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СКАЧАТЬ four oars had stopped, as if at a word of command, and the two who had been sitting in the stern were changing places with two of the rowers. A moment later all four oars shot forward, and paused. The blades dipped, the four rowers pulled together and the boat, which had been gliding slowly on, gathered speed once more.

      “Put your coat on, now you’re not rowing.”

      The words sounded clearly over the water, as well as the reply.

      “Aye, aye, sir.”

      Dick and Dorothea could see a small boy in the stern of the rowing boat, trying to put his coat on without really standing up, as the strong strokes of the rowers sent the boat shooting forward. There were four girls in the boat and two boys. Two of the girls had red woolly caps like Dorothea’s green one, and two of them had white. The larger of the boys and a girl in a red cap were rowing in the middle of the boat. Two girls were rowing in the bows, and a small girl with a white woolly cap was sitting in the stern with the small boy, who sat down suddenly just when it seemed he had got into his coat without an accident.

      The boat came straight for the island. The watchers on the shore saw it pass under the little cliff, below the tall pine, and close along the island shore.

      “Easy all!” they heard someone call.

      The boat slid on with oars lifted from the water.

      “Let’s go to the old harbour,” came another voice.

      “Give way!” The first voice sounded again, a clear, confident, ringing voice, and the oars dipped once more.

      “They’ve gone,” said Dick, as the boat swung round the low southern end of the island and disappeared behind a shoulder of rock. For a long time he watched, so long that he had to put his hands in his pockets in turn to get them warm again after holding the telescope.

      “Of course they may have rowed away behind the island,” said Dorothea.

      “I do wish this boat was in the water,” said Dick.

      “Even if it was, we can’t row,” said Dorothea.

      “It looks easy,” said Dick. “I’m sure we could manage.”

      “It’s no good thinking about it,” said Dorothea. “Look, there’s one of them. They’ve landed . . . ”

      Three or four of them could be seen hurrying about on the island beneath the leafless trees. Then, suddenly, at the northern end, the boat showed again. Only two were in it, the bigger of the two boys, and the smaller of the red-capped girls. They rowed out from the island towards the middle of the lake. On the island there was great activity, and presently a thin blue wisp of smoke climbed up among the trees, a flicker of flame showed low down, then more smoke and more flames as the sticks caught and the fire gathered strength. A girl with a kettle came down to the water’s edge and dipped water from the lake.

      “They must be making tea,” said Dorothea, dancing first on one foot and then on another, because her toes were very cold.

      “Scientific expedition,” said Dick. “Landed to cook a meal. But . . . Hullo! . . . What are they doing now?”

      Only one was left by the fire. The bigger red-capped girl, with the two children who had been sitting in the stern of the boat when they reached the island, came out on the cliff under the tall pine. She began waving a small flag on the end of a stick.

      “Is it for us?” said Dorothea hopefully.

      “No,” said Dick. “Look!”

      In the boat, far out on the lake, the boy was resting on his oars. The red-capped girl who was with him was standing up. She, too, had a flag and had begun to wave it.

      A shout of laughter sounded on the island.

      “Peggy, you donk. You’ve got that one all wrong. Try it again.” That clear voice they had heard before rang out over the water.

      There was more flag-waving in the boat, and more from the island. Then there was a pause, and a moment later the signalling began again, only this time the signallers had two flags apiece, and did not wave them but held the flags at arm’s length, first in one position and then in another.

      “It’s awfully cold,” said Dorothea at last, “standing about like this.” She had been very happy, waking up in this new place, but those children in the boat had somehow spoilt things. What fun they were having, six of them, all together. A new story began to shape itself in her mind, one that nobody would be able to read without tears . . . The Outcasts. By Dorothea Callum. Chapter I.

      “The two children, brother and sister, shared their last few crumbs and looked this way and that along the deserted shore. Was this to be the end?”

      “Oh well,” said Dick. “We can’t help not having a boat. Let’s go and find a really good place for an observatory.”

      *

      “IS IT FOR US? ”

      Time had passed quicker than they thought, while they had been looking at pigs and cows and enviously watching the children on the island. Mrs Dixon called them in for dinner just when they were asking Mr Dixon whether it would be all right for them to go up the cart track that seemed to climb up the fell from the gate on the opposite side of the main road. Mrs Dixon was in a hurry to get dinner over, because she was baking pork pies for which she had a name throughout the district. Her mind was in the oven and they got only the vaguest answers when they asked her about the children they had seen. “Yes. Staying at the farm along the road. Six of them? That would be the Blackett lasses as well . . . Dixon, do keep yon door shut, with pies in the oven and a cold wind enough to ruin all.” And then, after dinner, looking over her shoulder with her hand on the knob of the oven door wrapped in a fold of her apron, she told them, “Come you in at four o’clock for a cup of hot tea. You’ll be wanting dark for your star-gazing, and I’ll give you your supper later.”

      The main road, along which they had come from the station the night before, after their railway journey with Mrs Dixon, ran close past the front of the house, where there was a strip of garden and a front door that was hardly ever used, for the Dixons and all their friends went through the farmyard to the door that opened into the big farm kitchen. Dick and Dorothea came round the house and out into the road between the garden and a huge barn. They looked both ways along the road, but they could not see far because, to the right, it bent sharply round towards the lake and, to the left, it disappeared in a wood. They crossed the road, went through a gate exactly opposite the farmyard, and followed a cart track up a steep little pasture, through another gate, and then to the left, up the fell, between patches of dead bracken and grey lumps of rock that thrust up here and there out of the short-cropped grass. “Not limestone,” said Dick, picking up a bit and putting it in his pocket. Dorothea smiled to see him do it. The stone would wear a hole in his pocket, of course, but it was no use saying so when Dick was thinking about geology.

      They climbed up and up, and with every step they could see more of the lake beyond the woods, while, on the farther side, the snow-topped mountains seemed to rise higher and higher. Suddenly, as the track came over a shoulder of the hill, they saw on the open fell ahead of them an old grey barn.

      “It’s СКАЧАТЬ