Читать книгу The Big Six - Arthur Ransome - Страница 7

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“Asleep. Don’t disturb.” Someone was reading Bill’s notice.

“What cheek!” said someone else.

“I’ll disturb ’em,” said a third voice.

For some time Joe, Bill and Pete, lying on their bunks in the Death and Glory feeling better after a few hours sleep but in no hurry to get up, had heard people talking close by. Now a hearty bang on the roof of the cabin brought them to their feet. They came out into the cockpit to find the staithe crowded. The stranger whose boat they had rescued was looking at her mooring ropes and talking to George Owdon. The owner of the green houseboat was telling people how he had waked in the night to find himself drifting down the river. The two Towzer boys were telling how they had found their rowing skiff caught in the chains of the ferry. The owners of the Shooting Star were explaining that only luck had saved their little racing cutter from being wrecked against some piling, though they had tied her up themselves after sailing in her the day before. Mr. Tedder, the policeman, who had banged on the roof of the cabin, was looking at his note-book and sucking the end of his pencil. Everybody seemed to be talking at once but, as the Death and Glories came out into their cockpit, the angry chatter died to a sudden silence.

“So you’re at it again,” said Mr. Tedder. “What are you doing it for? Up late last night you were. I see a light in your windows. And now this morning you were seen casting off that yacht....”

“Tying it up,” said Joe.

“Why did you want to send my houseboat adrift?”

“What about our rowing boat?”

“You might have done fifty pounds’ worth of damage sending Shooting Star down the river.”

“We ain’t touched any of ’em,” said Joe. “Ask Tom Dudgeon.”

“Tom Dudgeon,” somebody laughed. “ ‘Ask Tom Dudgeon’ they say. Why, it was Tom started this game.”

“Where were you last night after twelve o’clock?” said Mr. Tedder. “Where were you? Casting off moorings and sending boats adrift all down the reach. That’s what you were doing.”

“We wasn’t,” said Joe.

“There’ll be no peace on the river till they’re off it,” said a voice.

“What’s ado here?”

“Dad,” called Pete, as his father pushed his way through the crowd.

Mr. Tedder turned round. “Your Pete’ll be in trouble over this,” he said. “And it’ll be you to pay the fine. Why don’t you look after him?”

“What you been up to, Pete?” said his father.

“Nothing,” said Pete.

“Haven’t they?” Again half a dozen people began talking at once.

Pete’s father listened.

“Shurrup,” he said suddenly. “Pete. You tell me. Have you touch any of them boats?”

“No,” said Pete.

“Hear that,” said Pete’s father.

Mr. Tedder silenced everybody. “I’m making this inquiry,” he said. “Where was this boat last night after twelve o’clock?”

“Up river,” said Joe.

“Down river, you mean,” said somebody.

“Up river,” said Joe.

“What were you doing in her?”

“We wasn’t in her.”

“Ar.” Mr. Tedder wrote busily in his book.

“They were ashore casting loose my houseboat.”

Mr. Tedder waved his pencil to quiet the old man.

“What were you doing?”

“Catching eels.”

“Eels! A likely story. Let’s see ’em.”

Bill said not a word but held out the bucket. Mr. Tedder looked solemnly at the eels in the bottom of it.

“We was with Harry Bangate at the eel sett,” said Joe.

“I bet that’s a lie,” said George Owdon.

“Soon settle that,” said Pete’s father. “Here’s old Harry now coming down the river.”

The eelman was rowing steadily downstream. Everybody knew him, with his grey mane hanging over his shoulders from under his tattered black hat. They shouted. He looked round as if to see what they were shouting at, and rowed on silently till he brought his old boat in beside the stern of the Death and Glory.

“Done with that bucket?” he said.

Bill emptied eels, blood and slime from the eelman’s bucket into their own and began sluicing the borrowed bucket over the side.

“Harry Bangate,” said Mr. Tedder. “These boys say they was with you at the eel sett last night.”

“And so they was,” said the old man. “Eels run well, the warmints.”

“How long was these boys with you?”

“They come before turn of tide,” said the old man. “Twelve o’clock, likely, and they stay with me till daylight when the warmints stop running. Anything amiss?”

“I tell you so,” said Pete’s father. “They never touch your boats.”

People on the staithe looked almost disappointed. Bill gave his bucket back to the eelman, who put it in the bottom of his boat, stepped ashore, and stumped off towards the inn. Mr. Tedder shut up his notebook, and looked first at one and then at another.

“Rum thing,” he said.

“They managed it somehow,” said one of the boat owners. “There’s nobody else to do it.”

“Two nights running,” said Mr. Tedder, scratching his head. “There was that cruiser of Jonnatt’s yesterday, and now all these.”

“Well if it wasn’t them,” said the owner of the green houseboat, “it’s up to the police to find out who it was. And to stop it. A pretty pass we’ve come to if I can’t sleep in this reach without having to get up at all hours to see that no rogue’s casting off my mooring ropes.”

“It’s all very well,” said George Owdon. “But we caught them at it when they were turning this yacht adrift.”

“And I tied her up all right last night,” said her owner.

“We find her with her mast in that tree,” said Joe. “There’s leaves on her deck yet. If you’d been a bit sooner you’d have seen us getting of her clear.”

“You hear that,” said Pete’s father.

“It certainly looked as if they were casting her off,” said George.

Half a dozen people at once were trying to talk to Mr. Tedder.

“Something’s got to be done.”

“Don’t you keep an eye on things at all?”

“Police can’t be up all night and all day,” said Mr. Tedder.

“We’ll have to go turn about in keeping watch.”

“We will if you will.”

The crowd drifted away, the owners of the boats that had been cast loose, George Owdon and his friend, still talking to Mr. Tedder and telling him what ought to be done as he walked slowly off the staithe.

“Tom was right,” said Joe. “They couldn’t prove nothing.”

“Drat ’em,” said Bill. “What about smoking them eels?”

“What about breakfast?” said Pete.

“Breakfast!” exclaimed Joe. “We oversleep breakfast. What about dinner?”

“Shove that kettle on the primus,” said Bill. “No need for anybody to go home. We got bread. We got cheese. We got apples. We got a tin of milk. And we got tea. Where are them sacks? Joe and me’ll be getting wood for the stove and we’ll be back, come that kettle on the boil.”

Twenty minutes later they had breakfast and dinner all in one. Two sacks full of waste scraps of wood and shavings lay in the cockpit. Joe and Bill had taken the empty sacks to Jonnatt’s boatshed as usual, but had been angrily told to clear out by the boatmen who were still sure they were to blame for the trouble of the day before. They had been luckier at the boatsheds down the river and had got a good lot of pitchpine, which always burns well, cedar which burns still better and mahogany shavings which they thought ought to make plenty of smoke.

“Chimbley’s good and wide, that’s one thing,” said Joe. “We’ll take the cap off. That’s easy. Put a stick across and they’ll hang beautiful.”

“I’ll bend up some wire hooks,” said Bill. “There’s that bit of telephone wire I save. I know that’d come handy for something.”

Then came the skinning of the eels. This was done by Joe and Bill together. Joe cut the skin round the neck of an eel. Bill held its head in a bit of cloth to stop it from slipping through his fingers. Joe worked round with his knife till he had loosened half an inch of skin. Then, with another bit of cloth, he got hold of that and pulled. After a few slips, pull devil, pull baker, pull Bill, pull Joe, the skin peeled off inside out like a glove. Then the skinned eel was handed over to Pete, who did the cleaning getting rid of the insides of the eel and the black blood along the backbone, while Joe and Bill were getting the skin off another.

“Mucketty truck,” said Pete, scraping away with his knife.

“You get it all out,” said Bill. “Poison a chap, that would, if you left it in.”

The next job was to get the eels into the chimney. They took off the tin smoke cap they had made to prevent the smoke blowing down their chimney instead of drawing up it. Bill bent four bits of wire into S-shaped hooks. Joe held a stout stick while he hung the eels on it, and then, carefully, they lowered the eels down the chimney till the ends of the stick rested on the edges of the chimney pot. Meanwhile, Pete had lit the fire and come up on the cabin-top again to see how things were going.

“There’s not much smoke coming up,” said Joe. “You go down and stoke a bit.”

Pete went below and came out again in a hurry.

“It smoke into the cabin something awful,” he said.

“Bound to,” said Joe.

“Can’t help that,” said Bill.

“What about putting the cap back?” said Joe.

“Could do,” said Pete. “That’d stop it blowing back.”

“That don’t want to draw too well,” said Bill. “There’s plenty smoke coming out atop.”

“There’s plenty more in the cabin,” said Pete.

All three went below.

Pete choked. Joe coughed. Bill wiped his smarting eyes.

“That’ll smoke us right out,” said Pete.

“You can’t smoke eels without smoke,” said Bill.

“They ain’t half bad stewed,” said Pete.

“We’ll smoke ’em now we’ve started,” said Joe.

“Try shutting the door,” said Bill.

“Put the cap on the chimbley quick,” said Joe. “We’ll have the fire out if that go on blowing back.”

Bill fixed the tin cap on the chimney. That helped a little but not much. At least as much smoke found its way out into the cabin as found its way up past the eels. But, as Bill pointed out, if the fire drew too well the eels would be broiled instead of being smoked.

Pete started choking and could not stop.

“You better get out, young Pete,” said Bill, and Pete struggled out into the cockpit.

“Shut that door,” said Joe, and Pete shut the door behind him. In a few minutes his choking stopped and he opened the door again. A red face showed through the smoke in the cabin and told him to shut it and keep it shut. He could hear that they were putting more wood on the fire. Clouds of smoke blew from the chimney. Presently the door suddenly opened and Joe put his head out and took deep breaths of air. “It’s when the grease drop on the fire,” panted Joe, and disappeared again.

Then Bill put his head out. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he grinned cheerfully.

“I’m going to fish,” said Pete.

“Fish away,” said Bill. “We could do with some perch. Joe and me’s going to smoke them eels or bust.”

“Shut that door,” shouted Joe out of the smoke in the cabin, and Bill took one more breath, and shut the door behind him.

An hour went by and then another. Pete sat fishing on the cabin roof. The eel-smokers coughed and choked below, putting their heads out now and again to save their lives. They had long stopped saying anything. First one head showed in the smoke that poured from the door the moment it was opened, and then the other, and then for as long as they could bear it, they shut themselves with the smoke.

There is always a chance of a perch by the staithe, and Pete was fishing with small red worms that had spent a week in moss and were at their very best. They were grand worms, red, bright and lively, but for some reason the perch that usually hang about the wooden piling and camp-shedding were not on the feed. One after another Pete kept catching small roach. Big roach are not bad when you have nothing better, but little ones are no good to a cook, and Pete put them back in the water as fast as he caught them, hoping every moment to see the two dips and the steady plunge of the float that would mean that a perch had taken his worm. But none of the bites were like that. Now the float would slip sideways, now it would sink a quarter of an inch deeper in the water, now it would do no more than steady itself in the stream. At each of these signals, Pete struck. Each one of them meant, if he was quick enough, another roach to be unhooked and dropped back into the river. It was disappointing, but anything was better than being smoked like the eels.

“Forty-seven,” he said to himself. “Or is it fifty-seven? Come on old perch!” But no perch took his worm. He began to fish not quite so keenly, and presently missed a bite because instead of watching his float he was looking at a small motor cruiser coming up the reach.

He knew at once that she was not a local boat. Like all the motor cruisers she carried her official number, and the letter in front of the figures was not B, meaning Bure, but W, meaning Waveney. She must have come up through Yarmouth from the south.

The cruiser was coming very slowly and the man at the wheel slowed her down still more when he saw that Pete was fishing. He even put his engine out of gear and the little cruiser slipped along almost silently. Pete had a good look at her, and saw that she was not an ordinary cruiser but a boat specially built for fishing. He saw rods lying in rests along the cabin-top, and other rod-rests fixed to the cockpit coamings.

“Wonder if he’s had any luck,” thought Pete.

He read the name on her bows, Cachalot, and remembered that was some kind of whale. He looked at his float just in time to catch a roach. He unhooked it, dropped it back, and almost instantly caught another.

“Hi!” called the man in the cruiser.

Pete looked up and down, saw nobody about, and realized that the man was calling to him. He lifted a hand as the wherrymen do, to show that he had heard. The cruiser was turning slowly round.

ANOTHER ONE TO PUT BACK

“Like to catch me some bait for to-morrow?” called the man.

“Could do,” said Pete.

“Have you got a keep-net to put them in?”

“No,” said Pete. “But we got a bucket.”

“Best put them in a keep-net. I’ll come round and leave you mine. I want a dozen or so good pike baits about the size of that one you just put back.”

Pete took in his rod and laid it along the cabin-top. The Cachalot swung round, went downstream and came up again even slower than before and slid close by the Death and Glory. The fisherman reached out and swung a keep-net to Pete.

“Penny a bait,” he said. “Twopence for really good ones. No tiddlers. You be here to-morrow afternoon. I’m going up to Wroxham for the night and I’ll call for them on the way down.”

“Waveney boat?” asked Pete, looking with interest at the little cruiser.

“Built in Beccles,” said her owner. “This is her first season.”

“Fine for fishing,” said Pete.

“That’s what she’s for,” said her owner.

He put the engine into gear and the slight wash stirred up by the propeller moved the Death and Glory where she lay. The cabin door flew open, and Bill’s face appeared. He was very red, his eyes were streaming and smoke poured past him out of the cabin.

“What’s up,” he said.

“Money for nothing,” said Pete, and pointed to the Cachalot which was moving off round the bend. “He want bait for pike-fishing and I’m to catch ’em. Penny each, and twopence for big ’uns. And there’s a shoal right handy. I been putting ’em back one after another. How’s them eels?”

“Getting smoked,” said Bill. “And Joe and me’s pretty near kippered.” He came up into the cockpit to have a better look at the Cachalot before she disappeared.

Joe also came up for a breath of air, and stood in the cockpit wiping the sweat off his face. “This is the last lot we smoke,” he said. “That want bigger chimbleys than what ours is.”

“Pete’s going to earn a bit of money,” said Bill. “Is he coming for them baits to-night?”

“To-morrow afternoon,” said Pete.

“That mean we can’t be off early.”

“Off?” said Pete.

“Out of here,” said Joe. “Bill and me’s been talking, and we’re going to go down river to-morrow just for the night.”

“Can’t go far,” said Bill. “But she’s all ready. Just a trial trip and to get away out of here. We got to get a bit of money before we go voyaging proper so as not to have to keep running home for grub. How many baits do you reckon to catch, young Pete?”

“There’s plenty about,” said Pete.

“You get him a dozen big ’uns,” said Bill. “That’s two bob. We could stock up well with that.”

This was a heartening idea and Pete settled down to fishing for roach while the two firemen shut themselves up in the cabin to go on with the job of smoking themselves and the eels.

Now that roach were wanted, they were not so willing to be caught. The bites were further and further apart and towards evening stopped altogether. Only four were swimming in the keep-net, hung over the side of the Death and Glory and Pete was thinking regretfully of the dozens he had put back before he had known they would be wanted.

At last Tom Dudgeon, who had had his sleep out, came rowing up to the staithe in his little Titmouse. On the way up he had been stopped by the Towzer boys who had asked him what the Coot Club was playing at, sending their rowing boat adrift. Bill and Joe decided that the eels must be pretty well done and that they need stoke no more, but let the smoke blow out of the cabin. They came up and joined Tom and Pete on the cabin roof. They told him how Mr. Tedder and all the others had been at them about what had happened in the night.

“But you told them you were at the eel sett?” said Tom.

“We tell ’em so, and Harry Bangate come along himself and tell ’em too.”

“They was still saying it was us,” said Bill.

“They’re going to watch the staithe and all this reach,” said Joe.

“We’re going down river a bit to-morrow,” said Bill. “And if we get a bit of money we’ll go voyaging, so if anything more happen they can’t patch it where it don’t belong.”

Just then, the old eelman came down to the staithe, unfastened his boat, and made ready to row away. He looked gravely at the four sitting on the roof of the Death and Glory.

“You didn’t play havoc with them boats before you come up to mine?” he asked cunningly.

“Of course we didn’t,” said Tom.

“There’s some of ’em think you did,” said the old man. “Now that sort of thing you didn’t ought to do.”

“But we didn’t,” said Tom.

The old man said not a word, but dipped his oars and rowed steadily away up the river.

“You hear that,” said Bill. “If everybody think that, we’d best be somewheres else.”

“But Dick and Dorothea’ll be here the day after to-morrow,” said Tom.

“We won’t go all that far,” said Bill.

“What about those eels?” said Tom.

“Ought to be done by now,” said Joe.

“Smoke’s well blowed away,” said Bill. “Let’s have supper.”

“They smell jolly good,” said Tom.

Joe, not without burning his fingers, got the cap off the chimney while Bill lifted the stick with the four eels shining black with grease and soot.

“I got a handkerchief,” said Pete.

“We better wash that before you take it back to your Mum,” said Bill a few minutes later.

“They look all right now,” said Tom.

“One apiece,” said Joe. “You cut the bread, Pete.” He held up his hands to show why. “Bill, look what you done to that kettle.”

“That’ll come off after,” said Bill.

They settled down in the cabin to eat their eel supper.

“It’s been an awful job,” said Joe.

“Worth it,” said Bill, smacking his lips, before taking his first mouthful.

For some minutes there was silence.

“Not bad,” said Bill hopefully.

“Bit sooty,” said Joe.

“Try with plenty of salt,” said Tom.

“Go on, Pete,” said Bill. “Ain’t you hungry?”

“Not clammed,” said Pete.

“It’s their not being hot and not exactly cold,” said Tom.

“Some eels ain’t as good as others,” said Bill. “This ain’t a very good one, that’s all.”

Presently they gave up and emptied their plates into the river.

“It’ll bring the fish,” said Pete.

They made up their suppers with bread and cheese.

“Worth trying anything once,” said Joe.

“We say we smoke ’em and we done it,” said Bill.

After supper Joe and Bill put up their rods and fished for a while with Pete. Tom watched. Not one of the three had a bite.

“Too many at it,” said Pete.

“Pete’s the fisher,” said Bill.

“I’ll get up early to-morrow,” said Pete, “and catch ’em at their brekfusses.”

Across the staithe they saw Mr. Tedder, George Owdon, his friend, and the two Towzers in earnest talk.

“They aren’t really going to keep watch all night?” said Tom.

“That’s what they say,” said Joe.

“Let’s get to bed,” said Bill. “And we’ll wake young Pete early.”

Tom went off.

“I say, Tom,” said Bill as Tom rowed away, “you tell your Mum not to try smoking them eels.”

“Stew ’em,” said Joe. “Less work and better eating.”