Читать книгу The Big Six - Arthur Ransome - Страница 5

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“Close on twelve,” said Joe. “I’m off to fetch Tom.” He opened the door and let the cool night air into the cabin, where, for the last hour, the Death and Glories had been stewing round their stove. Joe wiped the sweat from his face as he came out into the cockpit.

“Phew! That’s cold,” he said. He shone his dimming torch over the side. “Tide’s still flooding,” he said. “Plenty of time, if Tom don’t sleep too hard.” He shut the others in with the warmth, stepped ashore and, as soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, set off at a steady jog trot through the sleeping village. He slowed up at Dr. Dudgeon’s gate and, on his toes, crept round the house till he stood by the Coot Club shed close under Tom’s window.

He felt for a dangling string and could not find it. Had Tom forgotten? He switched on his torch and by its faint red glow saw the end of the string swinging just above his head. He took firm hold of it and gave it a hearty tug. Nothing happened. He tugged again. He picked up a handful of gravel and threw it up against the window. Some of it came down again on his upturned face. He spat a bit of gravel from his mouth. Drat that Tom! And then a whisper came from above him.

“Who’s there?”

“Coots for ever!”

“And ever!”

“String must be stuck,” said Joe. “Thought I’d break it if I tug harder.”

“Sh!” whispered Tom. “You tugged hard enough. Nearly had my leg off, but I couldn’t shout. I’ll be down in half a minute. Stand clear....”

A sea-boot dropped and then another. They seemed to make a dreadful noise as they landed on the path in the quiet of the night. Tom waited, listening. Then an oilskin coat floated down, slipping sideways like a huge bat. Then came the two ends of a doubled rope.

“Got them?” whispered Tom. “Give them a pull. Both ends at once.”

Joe tugged.

“Hold them steady,” came a whisper from above. “I’m coming.”

The ropes jerked. Joe held on till a pair of feet were kicking near his head. A moment later the President of the Coot Club was standing on the ground beside him.

“Where are those boots?”

“I got one,” said Joe. “And the oily.”

“Here’s the other,” said Tom, pushing his stockinged feet into them. “I’ll just get rid of the rope. They’ll be awake before I come back.” He pulled on one end of the rope and went on pulling, hand over hand while the other end climbed up into the darkness and presently dropped at his feet. Nothing was left to show that the President of the Coot Club had chosen that way of coming out instead of using the stairs and the front door. Tom coiled the rope and put it in the shed. “Let’s have that oily,” he said, and bundled it up to carry under his arm.

They went quietly round the house and into the road.

“Come on,” said Joe, and began to trot.

“We’re not late are we?” said Tom, trotting beside him.

“Tide’s not turned yet,” said Joe, “but we want to get up there before it do.”

“I wonder if it’s a good night for them,” said Tom.

“You never know with eels,” said Joe.

They kept up a steady, easy trot along the deserted road. There was no moon, but it was not inky dark and they could see the shapes of the houses against the sky.

“Weren’t you scarey coming along here alone?” said Tom.

“I ain’t young Pete,” said Joe, and suddenly stopped short.

“What’s the matter?”

“What’s that light?” said Joe. “Somebody’s up late.”

“Where?”

“In there. It’s gone.... Listen....”

They had come as far as the first of the big boatsheds that lay between the road and the river. At this time of year, with the season ending, boat after boat was being hauled up into it to lie under cover through the winter. They knew that men had been working late there. But this was midnight and all the village ought to be asleep, except for Tom and Joe, the other two who were waiting for them at the staithe and the old eelman who was going to let them see him lift his nets.

“There can’t be anyone in there,” said Tom.

“What’s the light for then?”

“It was a star shining in the window.”

“Stars not bright enough to-night,” said Joe. “More like a bike lamp or one of our torches. It flash off sharp while I look.”

“Nobody’s got any business in there anyway,” said Tom.

On tip toe they crossed the road and looked into the shed through an open door. All was black dark.

“Listen,” said Joe.

“Only an old rat,” said Tom. “Come on, Joe. He’ll have all the eels out of the river before we get there.”

“Not with the tide still coming up,” said Joe.

“Come on,” said Tom.

“Run quiet,” said Joe.

They ran on, as quietly as seaboots would let them, past dark, sleeping houses, past one after another of the boathouses looming huge between the road and the river, past Mr. Tedder’s and came at last round the corner of Jonnatt’s big shed to see two cabin windows glowing brightly by the staithe.

Joe slapped the cabin roof.

The door opened, a puff of hot air came out and with it the heads of Bill and Pete.

“You been a long time coming,” said Bill.

“We’re here now,” said Tom.

Joe was already casting off the Death and Glory’s mooring ropes.

“All clear,” he said. “Stand by for engines.”

Pete and Bill took the oars from the cabin roof. Joe pushed off and came aboard.

“See she don’t touch that yacht,” he said. “Go astern on port engine. I’ll fend her off. Now then. Ahead both engines. Keep her in the middle of the river. Look out, Tom. Let’s go in the cabin. No room for four in the cockpit when she’s under power.”

He dived into the cabin. Pete and Bill were standing in the cockpit, facing forward to work their oars. One nudge from an oar was enough for Tom. Bumping his head as he went in, he crawled after Joe.

“Gosh! You’ve got it warm in here,” he said, blinking in the light of the hurricane lantern and looking at the glowing stove.

“Just snug,” said Joe.

“Let’s have a bit of air in,” said Tom, opening the door which Joe had carefully closed, and sitting as near it as he could.

“Tell you what,” said Joe, lamenting the hot air pouring out. “We’ll sit on the cabin-top. Then we can shut her up to keep warm while we’re with old Harry. We’ll be there in a minute. He say not to come too near.”

“Good,” said Tom.

“Hi!” called Joe through the door. “Half speed with engines. Don’t crack us on the head while we get out.”

Pete and Bill lifted their oars from the water and held them steady for a moment while Tom and Joe came out and crawled forward out of their way. Then they set to work again. The Death and Glory was moving up the short reach above the inn, past dim, lightless bungalows. Tom and Joe, sitting on the top of the cabin peered forward into the darkness.

“We must be pretty near the bend now,” said Tom.

“There’s his light,” called Joe. “Easy with starboard engine. Full ahead port engine....”

The Death and Glory swung slowly round the bend of the river. A distant glimmering light, reflected from the water, showed where the old eelman had his houseboat and his nets.

“Don’t go too near,” said Tom.

“I know that,” said Joe, straining his eyes. “But we got to hit the right place ... Easy both ...” The Death and Glory slid silently on. “Half speed.... Easy....” Joe stood on the foredeck holding to the mast and peering at the wall of reeds that showed a little darker than the sky. “Port engine ahead.... Easy....”

There was a brushing sound as the Death and Glory nosed her way into the reeds. She stopped as her stem cut gently into the soft mud, and there was a sudden loud squelch as Joe jumped ashore with rond anchor and mooring rope.

“Gone in?” asked Tom.

“Not over my boots,” came Joe’s voice out of the darkness. “She’ll be all right here.” The dim glow of a torch showed where he was stamping the rond anchor into the mud.

“Bring our lantern,” called Joe. “We’ll dowse it before we get too near.”

“I’m going to put some more on the fire,” said Pete.

“Buck up,” said Tom.

The four of them, one behind the other, led by Bill with the lantern, squelched their way through the reeds. The ground quivered as they put their feet down. Every now and then a splash told where a foot had gone into the water. Suddenly the eelman’s light showed close ahead of them.

“Dowse that lantern,” said Joe, and Bill blew it out.

“Who go?” A hoarse deep voice spoke out of the dark.

“Us,” called Tom.

“Made sure you’d be sleeping,” said the voice. “But tide’s not turned. You’re on your time. We’ll not be lifting yet awhile. Mind your step now. Give me your hand....”

They were on slippery mud almost touching the black tarred side of the eelman’s old hulk. Once upon a time it had been a boat, but it would never swim again unless in a flood. It had been turned into a hut years ago, with a couple of windows, and a stove and a chimney almost as simple as those of the Death and Glory. In this old ark the eelman lived and mended his nets and watched the river, and baited his eel lines, and made his babs, when the weather was right for that kind of fishing. But the eel sett, a net stretching from one side of the river to other, lowered to the bottom when boats were going by and lifted when the eels were running, was his serious business, and the members of the Coot Club had long been waiting for a chance to watch him at it.

“There’s a step on the side,” he said. “Come in now, and better bump heads than stamp feet. Eels don’t fare to run with elephants stamping round.”

The old eelman’s cabin was higher than the Death and Glory’s. Even Tom could stand upright in it except in the low doorway. There was a bunk along one side, with a patchwork bedspread over it. There was a table under one of the windows. There was a bench beside it. An old Jack Tar stove was in the middle of the floor, nearly red hot, with a big black kettle singing on the top of it. A long-barrelled, ancient gun hung from a couple of nails on the wall over the bunk. There were shelves with all kinds of gear, weights for nets, coiled eel-lines with their twenty or thirty hooks stuck in a cork that rested in the middle of the coil. On the table was a big pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, with all the metal work painted white to keep off the rust. The walls were covered with pictures cut out of newspapers, brown and smoky with age, pictures of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, pictures of soldiers off to South Africa, and pictures of the Coronation of Edward the Seventh. The old man’s interest in history seemed to have stopped about then, for there were no pictures of anything that happened later.

The four Coots stowed themselves where they could, Tom and Joe on the bench, Bill and Pete on the eelman’s bunk. The old man himself poured water from the kettle into a huge enamel tea pot. He stirred it with a spoon and put it on the stove beside the kettle.

“How soon will you be lifting the pod?” said Tom.

“Lifting?” said the old man. “Tide’s only turning now. Got to raise the sett first. Give the ebb time to run and eels with it and we’ll see.” He took three mugs from nails on the wall of the cabin, filled each mug nearly up with tea as black as stout, slopped some milk in and added a big spoonful of sugar. “Two to a mug now, and one for me,” he said. “Take a drink of that now. Why young Pete’s gaping. Take a drink of that and keep awake and I’ll nip out and haul up.”

The hot, bitter tea scalded their throats, but after a drink of it, even Pete no longer wanted to yawn or rub his eyes. The old man looked out into the dark. “I’ll haul now,” he said. “Tide’s going down. No. You stay here. Don’t want you slipping all over.”

He was gone. The four Coots came out of the cabin. At first they could see nothing. But they heard the creak of an old windlass. Then, dimly, they saw that the eelman was crossing the river in his boat. They heard creaking from the other side. Then they saw that he was coming back, though they could not hear the noise of oars. Presently, he was with them again, went into the cabin, told them to shut the door behind them, poured himself out another mug of tea, blew the steam from it and drank.

“You ain’t never seen pods lifted?” he said. “Seventy year to-morrow I see ’em first.”

“Seventy years,” said Tom.

“My birthday to-morrow,” said the old man.

“To-day or to-morrow?” said Tom.

“You’re right. Gone midnight. Seventy year to-day.”

“Many happy returns,” said Tom.

“Many of ’em,” said Joe, Bill and Pete.

The old man chuckled. “Live to ninety we do,” he said. “Another twelve year anyways. On my birthday seventy year gone my old uncle let me sit along of him by the eel sett same as you’re sitting along of me. Above Potter was his old setts.... Drink up. There’s plenty more.” He filled up the teapot from the kettle. “You know Potter, you do? But there been changes since then. There weren’t no houses at Potter then, saving the wind pumps. And there weren’t no yachts, hardly. Reed-boats and such, and the wherries loading by the bridge. And there were plenty of netting then, and liggering for pike, and plenty of fowl....”

“Did anybody look after the birds?” said Tom, thinking of the Coot Club.

The old man laughed. “Gunners,” he said.

“What about buttles?” said Pete.

“Shot many a score of ’em I have,” said the old man.

“Oh I say.... Not bitterns,” said Tom.

“Many a score. There was plenty of ’em then, and then they get fewer till there ain’t none. Coming back, they tell me, they are now. If I was up Hickling way with my old gun....”

“But you can’t shoot bitterns,” said Pete, horrified.

“And why not?” asked the old man. “In old days we shoot a plenty and there were a plenty for all to shoot.”

“But that’s why they disappeared,” said Tom.

“Don’t you believe it,” said the old man. “They go what with the reed cutting and all they pleasure boats....”

Tom looked at the faces of the other Coots, to see how they were taking these awful heresies.

“But they’re coming back,” said Joe. “And no one’s allowed to shoot ’em. And there’ll be more every year. We found two nests last spring.”

“Who buy the eggs?” asked the old man.

“Nobody,” said Joe. “We didn’t sell ’em. We didn’t take ’em. But they would have been taken if we hadn’t have watched.”

“Some folk are rare fools,” said the old man. “Now if I’d have knowed where them nests was, it’d have been money in my pocket and tobacco in my old pipe.”

The Coots looked at each other. It was no good arguing with old Harry, but, after all, it was one thing for an old Broadsman to talk about taking bitterns’ eggs and quite another for somebody like George Owdon who had plenty of pocket money already without robbing birds.

The old man caught the look on Pete’s face.

“Old thief. Old Harry Bangate,” he said. “That’s what you think. And I say, No. What was them birds put there for? Why, for shooting.”

“But if you shoot ’em, they won’t be there,” said Joe.

“When we was shooting there were always a plenty.”

It was clear that the old man would never understand why the members of the Coot Club spent their days and nights in the spring guarding nests and watching birds, and Tom was wise enough to change the subject.

“Tell us some more about what it used to be like,” asked Tom, and the old man talked of ancient times, of the hundreds of wherries there used to be (he had been a wherryman himself in his youth), of regattas on Barton, of punt-gunning and smelt-catching on Breydon Water, of the great flood of fifty years ago, and of the fights over the chaining up of the entrances to some of the smaller Broads. No one noticed how the time went till at last, looking at a huge old watch hung on a nail, the old man got to his feet, opened the door of his cabin and let in a great rush of cool, night air.

“We’ll have a look at them old eels,” he said.

He lit their lantern for them, and took his own from its hook. “You’ll want that in here,” he said. “Two’ll stop here and two with me. Can’t have more in the boat.”

“Who’ll go first?” said Tom.

But there was no argument about it. The eelman’s boat was afloat close by the stern of his old hulk, and he just took hold in the dark of the two nearest to him, who happened to be Tom and Bill, and told them to hop in and hop in quiet. A moment later he had pushed off.

Tom and Bill sat at one end of the boat, with the lantern at their feet. Before them a huge flat box went from one side of the boat to the other instead of a rowing thwart. They could see that the old man was leaning out over the bows.

“How’s she moving?” whispered Tom.

“Has he got a hold of the rope?” whispered Bill.

It was quite dark, except for the lantern at their feet and that other lantern in the eelman’s hulk, which shone through the open door and showed them Pete and Joe standing in the stern of the hulk as if they had been cut out of cardboard.

The boat stopped, and the old man reached down with a pole that had a hook on the end of it.

“Here that come,” he said. “One of you hold the light and t’other give me a hand.”

Up it came, a long tube of netting, keeping its shape because of rings of osier fastened inside it.

Bill and the old eelman lifted the end of it aboard. Tom thought it was empty, but then, suddenly he saw that the narrow tip of it was swollen and shining and white, and he knew that the light of the lantern was reflected from the glistening bellies of the eels.

LIFTING THE POD

“Ope the keep,” said the old man and Tom, holding the lantern in one hand, pulled open the lid of the flat box in the middle of the boat. The old man brought the pointed end of the net over the box, untied a knot and let loose a shining stream of eels. Then he pulled tight the lacing that closed the narrow end, retied it, and dropped the net over the side.

“Tremendous lot,” said Tom.

“They’re working. They’re working,” said the old man.

The boat was moving slowly back across the river.

“Have you got any?” They heard Pete’s voice from the hulk.

“Dozens,” said Bill. He and Tom were trying to count the eels by the light of the lantern. But it was not easy, for the keep was half full of water, and the eels were swimming with their dark backs uppermost and no longer showing their white bellies.

“My turn next time,” said Pete as they climbed back into the hulk.

“If you ain’t asleep,” said the old man.

More tea was drunk, blacker than ever, for the teapot had been standing on the stove all this time. The old man talked of eels. “Where are they all going?” Pete had asked, and Tom had told him about their spawning grounds in the far Atlantic and how the little eels on their way to England meet the big eels on their way back, and how the big eels live comfortably on the stream of little ones. “Cannibals,” Pete had said. But the old man would have none of such a tale. Eels, for him, were born in the mud and went down the rivers to get a taste of salt water. “Smell the tide, they do and follow that down.”

“What’s the biggest eel you’ve ever caught?” said Tom.

“I didn’t catch him,” said the old man. “Not to keep him. But he were a big ’un, that warmint. I dart for him with my old spear and catch his tail, and he shake his tail and throw my old spear into the reeds, and he near upset my boat before he go off fierce downstream with a wash after him bringing the banks down like them motor cruisers. Did you never hear tell of the old eel that come up through Breydon Water to Reedham to swop crowns with the king? That were a rare old eel. And did you never hear tell of the sea-serpent that very near stick between banks going down between Yarmouth and Gorleston? Sea serpent? That weren’t no sea serpent. Great old eel. That’s what he were.”

An hour and more went by, and again the old man looked at the big watch hung on its nail. Again he opened the door to the night air, but this time Pete and Joe went with him in the boat and Tom and Bill watched from the hulk as the boat moved slowly out along the net, the lantern glowing in the dark.

“They’ve stop now,” said Bill.

The lantern was lifted up and they saw its reflections dancing in the stirred water as the eelman brought up the pod.

They heard Pete’s voice, “Whoppers.”

They heard the splash of the eels pouring from the end of the pod into the keep. “Gosh! He’s got a lot that time,” said Tom.

Presently the lantern was coming nearer. They were coming back.

“Hundreds,” said Joe, shaking the water from his hands.

“Working nicely, the warmints!” said the old man.

“He’s going to give us some of ’em,” said Pete.

And again there was tea to drink, and the door of the cabin shut out the night and the lantern hanging from the roof shone more and more dimly in the steam from wet clothes and the smoke from the old man’s pipe.

“How are we going to cook ’em?” said Bill. “Stew ’em?”

“There’s stewing,” said the old man, “and souping, and frying and smoking. But you won’t try smoking. You want a close fire for that and to hang ’em in the chimney.”

“We got a stove,” said Joe.

“And what about our chimney?” said Bill.

“Let’s smoke ’em,” said Pete. “We ain’t never tried smoking. And with our stove....”

“What do you have to do?” asked Bill.

“Skin ’em and clean ’em and hang ’em in the smoke,” said the old man.

It sounded simple enough, and since the Death and Glory had a stove and a chimney it seemed a pity not to try it.

“We’ll smoke ’em,” said Bill.

“And you take a couple to your Mum,” said the old man, turning to Tom. “Don’t you go smoking ’em. Mrs. Dudgeon she like ’em stewed.”

“I’d like to try smoked,” said Tom.

“You come and share ours,” said Joe, and so it was agreed.

But by now not even the black tea could keep Pete awake after coming in from the night into the steaming cabin of the hulk. The old man talked on to the others and to himself but the questions came less often and presently stopped altogether. He looked from one to another of his visitors, chuckled to himself, refilled his pipe and poured himself another mug. And when the light began to show in the sky, and he thought it was time to lift the eel pod for the last time, he looked at his visitors again and went quietly out without waking them.