Читать книгу Swallows & Amazons - Boxed Set - Arthur Ransome - Страница 103

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Bill stirred in his bunk, and waked suddenly to disturbing comforts. What was this soft blanket at his chin instead of the hard canvas of the Viper’s sail locker? Bill woke all of a piece, everywhere at once, like a little animal, and with a single swift wriggle pressed himself hard against the planking at the back of his bunk. Close in the angle of wall and floor, whether in a bunk, a sail locker or elsewhere, a boy is fairly well protected against ropes’ ends and such things. But no rope’s end searched him out or thudded on the planking. No. He was mistaken. He had not overslept. Nobody was cursing him for not having lit the galley fire. There was nobody there. He was alone, with a couple of warm, brown blankets in a box in which he could stretch without coming anywhere near touching either end.

He remembered where he was, and a slow grin spread over his broad, freckled, red face.

“Wonder who’s lighting the galley in the old Viper?” he thought, and then he shivered, remembering the fog of yesterday, the drifting dinghy, the noise of sirens and foghorns, the sudden shadow of a ship’s bows coming down on him out of the fog, the rope thrown to him, and then the surprise of seeing Mr. Duck at the wheel, and of finding what vessel it was that had picked him up. Better could not have happened to him than that.

Light came into the little cabin from the skylight over the alleyway and saloon, but Bill could not see out. He had no need. He had not been born on the Dogger Bank for nothing. He knew at once, from the motion, that the Wild Cat was still hove to. That was all right. No hurry. And then Bill chuckled to himself.

“Cap’ns and mates an’ all,” he was thinking. “Why, if Black Jake had knowed there was nobody else aboard he’d have had Mr. Duck out of the Wild Cat in two shakes, so he would. . . . Not but what they ain’t a handy lot for children.”

There was no one to remind him that he himself was not as old as Nancy. He felt a hundred in comparison with any one of the crew. The skipper and Peter Duck seemed to him right enough. The skipper could handle the ship and everybody knew that a better seaman than old Peter Duck had never sailed out of Lowestoft pier heads. Common talk that was. Everybody knew it. But the rest of them! “Cap’ns and mates! Cap’ns and mates! Why, Black Jake and his gang’d eat ’em. It’s a good thing as I come aboard. Makes three of us, anyway.”

He reached up out of the blankets to the little rack above his head and took down from it the new toothbrush that Susan had given him the night before. He looked at it curiously. “Cap’ns and mates!” he said again, “and they don’t know how to clean between their teeth with a bit of rope yarn!”

But just then someone stamped on the deck overhead, and he heard John and Roger struggle out of their cabin and race for the deck. Toothbrush in hand, he was after them in a moment. Queer sort of clothes they seemed to have on, the sort of thing you’d see minstrels wearing, giving a show on Yarmouth Pier. He dashed up the companion after them, and out on deck.

“Morning, Captain Flint! Morning, Mr. Duck,” they said as they hurried, not too steadily, forward along the heaving deck. He said the same, and hurried after them, getting a nod from the skipper, on the way.

Captain Flint and Peter Duck were busy, with sextant and chronometer, trying to get an observation. The sun was showing now and then through scurrying patches of grey cloud. There was not quite so much white water as there had been, and though the wind was still strong it was no longer lifting whole tops of waves.

“Come on,” shouted John, flinging his pyjamas down the hatch and swinging a canvas bucket over the side.

“Come on,” said Roger, tearing off his pyjamas, throwing them after John’s, ready for the bucketful of salt sea water that John emptied over him.

Those queer clothes of theirs certainly did seem to come off easily. Bill pulled at his ragged jersey, after wedging his jacket in a safe place among the halyards. He struggled out of his patched blue trousers. He pulled off the vest that for some weeks had been keeping him warm underneath. It was pretty cold, but if these children could stand it, he would.

“Come on,” said Bill, bracing himself to meet the bucketful that got him full in the face.

“Come on,” said John. “You take the bucket and chuck one at me. . . . I say, you do know how to dip full buckets. I never get a really full one first chuck. Hullo! Haven’t you got a towel? Skip along, Roger, and bring one up. Let’s have the bucket. I’ll try to give you a really good one, too.”

A few minutes later Bill rubbed a good deal of himself dry with the towel that Roger pushed up through the hatch. Somehow or other he forced damp arms and legs into his clothes and felt surprisingly warm. He would do the whole thing properly while he was about it. He took the canvas bucket and filled it once more over the side. Then, pulling out the toothbrush, he dipped it in.

“No need for that,” said John, thinking of the taste of salt water. “Susan always gives us a ration of fresh for teeth.”

“I was just giving it a bit of a damp,” said Bill. That was wrong, was it? Well, a fellow couldn’t learn all these tricks at once. He glanced hopefully aft. Perhaps they would be making sail. If it came to sails he’d be one up on these children again. Not like toothbrushes!

But he had to wait till after breakfast for his chance, and then it did not come with sails.

Breakfast was late. But the queer thing was that there was no shouting at anybody, though everybody must have been hungry. The two mates just came pelting up, saying they were sorry, and bolted round the corner into the galley, where the skipper himself had put the porridge on to boil in the double cooker. There was no doubt about it. The Wild Cat was a very queer ship indeed. And later, when everybody but the skipper was down in the saloon, and Susan was ladling out the porridge, while Peggy was sluicing hot cocoa into the mugs, Bill looked from face to face and wondered. There was probably a catch about it somewhere. But old Peter Duck blew the steam off his cocoa and swigged it as if everything was perfectly usual. Well, folk did say that there was nothing about the sea that Peter Duck didn’t know. Life in the Wild Cat was a bit different from life in a Grimsby trawler, and still more different from those days in the Viper which had left a fair lot of bruises on Bill but he supposed that the longer he lived the more he was likely to learn. With one eye on Mr. Duck, he blew the steam off his own cocoa, and pitched the porridge into his gullet, in the same calm, business-like manner that he admired in the old seaman. As for those children. . . . When breakfast was over and Captain Flint had come down for his, while Mr. Duck had gone on deck, and when Captain Flint had gone, too, and the crew were alone in the saloon, Bill saw his chance of showing that he, too, knew something. It came with a word that Nancy let slip about the horrible way in which the Wild Cat was shaking things up. Bill felt in his pocket. Yes, he still had that quarter plug of black tobacco. . . .

Captain Flint and Peter Duck had been on deck for some time smoking their morning pipes in the shelter of the deckhouse and wondering how soon things would have calmed down enough to let the Wild Cat square away once more for Finisterre. Captain Flint tapped his pipe out on the rail and noticed that nobody except himself and the old seaman had come on deck after breakfast.

“Funny, they’re so quiet down there,” he said. “I suppose they’ve a lot to talk over with young Bill. Hullo! There’s Nancy. . . .”

Nancy had come up through the forehatch. She moved unsteadily to the side, and looked over the bulwarks at the grey water and at the white-topped waves that came rolling down to the Wild Cat one after another, threatening to come aboard but never doing so.

“Hullo, Nancy?” called Captain Flint.

Nancy looked round, but did not answer.

“What’s the matter with Nancy?” said Captain Flint. “I thought she’d got over it for good, that first day.”

Just then Titty, very pale and green, came out of the companion, and stood there, holding on to the mast.

“You too?” said Captain Flint. “What have you been up to below decks? You were all right last night, and it was much worse then.”

Titty looked at him as if he were three yards farther away than he was. She slid and scrambled, keeping her feet but nearly falling, down to the bulwarks where she clung on by the shrouds.

“What’s happened?” asked Captain Flint again.

“It’s . . . it’s quite all right,” said Titty, and was dreadfully sick over the side.

“What can they be doing down there?” said Captain Flint, and he walked round the deckhouse and down the companion into the saloon.

He found no one in the saloon. But there was a noise of talking in the fo’c’sle. Captain Flint started forward. This is what he heard.

“That’s two.” The voice was the voice of Bill, who was sitting on a coil of rope talking to John, Susan, Peggy and Roger.

“Well, I told them not to try it,” said Susan. “And don’t spit on the floor again, please, Bill. Go on using the old paint can.”

“I think I’ve had enough for now,” said John.

“Can’t I try just a tiny bit?” said Roger.

“No,” said Susan.

“I’m not going to try it,” said Peggy.

“I can turn you all up without that,” said Bill. “This seasickness, it’s just nothing. Chewing tobacco ain’t got nothing to do with it. Shall I tell you how they cure me? ‘Don’t you never hold in,’ they said. ‘Get it over the side and feel better,’ they said. And the way they cure me was bacon fat. Have you got any bacon fat?”

“Yes,” said Peggy.

“Well, you wants a bit of string,” said Bill. “Then you ties the string to the biggest bit of bacon fat you can swallow. Then you swallows it, keeping a hold on the other end of the string. Then you . . .”

There was a noise of scuffling up the ladder and out of the forehatch.

Roger, with a face the colour of old mousetrap cheese, came bolting out of the fo’c’sle, was brought up sharp by a lurch of the vessel, grabbed at a bulkhead, came skidding through the alleyway into the saloon, dodged Captain Flint, struggled round the table, flung himself at the companion steps and climbed desperately.

The voice of Bill came again from the fo’c’sle, in, tones of mild surprise.

“Well,” he said, “if they won’t wait to be told . . .”

Captain Flint smothered his laughter, turned back, and went up again on deck. By now the whole ship’s company was there, except, of course, Bill. Nancy, Susan and Peggy were up in the bows, looking doubtingly at each other. John was holding on to the capstan, swallowing hard and fast. Titty and Roger were leaning over the bulwarks together. Titty was holding Roger’s head. Mr. Duck was taking no notice of them at all, looking at clouds racing across the sky.

Captain Flint said nothing. He walked slowly forward, in time to see a shock of red hair come up out of the forehatch. Bill, the ragged ends of his blue trousers tucked into a spare pair of sea-boots, lent him by Peggy, climbed out.

“You keeps a hold of the end of the string,” he was saying, “and you jiggles it, just so’s to shift the bacon . . .”

Nancy, Susan and Peggy turned hurriedly away. John gulped.

“Look here, young man,” said Captain Flint to Bill. “We can’t have you aboard here if you begin the day by putting three-quarters of my crew out of action.”

“I was just telling ’em how to cure seasickness,” said Bill.

“Well, suppose you don’t,” said Captain Flint. “Those two mates are doing the cooking, and if you go on the way you’ve started there won’t be any dinner. You’d better stop this and give them a hand with the potatoes.”

“I’m a rare hand with potatoes,” said Bill willingly. “Gutting herrings, too. There ain’t a boy in Lowestoft can gut herrings like what I can. . . .”

“All right,” said Captain Flint. “Get those mates to give you some potatoes to peel. But don’t talk to them about herrings. Not yet.”

“Don’t seem as if they likes to learn about them things,” said Bill.

Nothing more was said about Bill’s cure for seasickness. Nobody bore him any malice for it, but he learnt that day that there were some things allowed in the Viper that were not allowed in the Wild Cat. After the middle-day dinner Captain Flint, impatient to be getting on, decided that under very much shortened sail she could stand what was left of the gale. Bill showed then, while they were setting the reefed foresail, that at some jobs not one of these children could touch him. Then, when the tiny headsail had been let draw, and the Wild Cat had heeled over and picked herself up to run, and was flying away to the south-west across the Bay of Biscay, Bill went aft, dug out once more his plug of black tobacco, cut himself a small scrap, braced himself close by the steering-wheel, and, silently chewing, settled down to watch with an expert eye Captain Flint’s performance as a helmsman.

“How long have you been chewing tobacco?” asked the skipper suddenly.

“I begin when I were young,” said Bill. “You needn’t be feared, sir. I always spits to loo’ard.”

“All right,” said Captain Flint. “But don’t waste tobacco on the others, and no chewing below decks or in your cabin.”

All the rest of that day, all that night, and all the next day, no one was allowed to touch the wheel but Captain Flint and Peter Duck, while the Wild Cat raced for the south among rolling seas that seemed like mountains. Whenever he could, Bill was on deck, watching them. It was only on the second day when the wind began to lessen, that he was at all dissatisfied. He admitted to himself that Captain Flint could steer well enough, though not up to Black Jake. With Peter Duck’s steering he had, of course, no fault to find. But he did think, that second day, that they might have shaken out a reef and carried a bit more sail.

Once, when Peter Duck sent him into the deckhouse with a message, he stopped to look at the sporting guns that Captain Flint had there standing upright in a rack, each with a bit of oily rag stuffed into the mouth of the barrel to keep dirt out.

“What’s this one?” he asked.

“Rifle,” said Captain Flint, glancing up from the chart.

“And this?”

“Shotgun.”

“Rabbits and such?” said Bill, looking with greater interest at the third.

“Elephant-gun, that,” said Captain Flint. “I had it in Ceylon.”

“There ain’t no elephants aboard the Viper,” said Bill, “but I reckon it’s lucky you got them guns.”

“We’ve lost the Viper all right, after that last blow,” said Captain Flint, “even if he didn’t go right up the Irish Sea looking for us in that fog.”

“When Black Jake’s got his teeth into something he don’t let go as easy as that,” said Bill.

“Cheer up,” said Captain Flint. “We won’t hand you over.”

“I wasn’t thinking you would,” said Bill.

Queer ship, the Wild Cat was, and queer folk aboard her, too. They didn’t seem to take things seriously. They didn’t know Black Jake and his friends. Bill said no more, and went out.

But Nancy, who had been looking at the pencilled spot on the chart, that Captain Flint had just been putting there to mark their position, followed him. She found him in the lee of the deckhouse looking up at the sails.

“What’s up, Bill?” she said.

“If this ship was mine,” said Bill, “and I had Mr. Duck aboard her, and knowed that Black Jake was after him, I wouldn’t be sailing her easy. I’d crowd on sail, and carry on till her masts went or I sailed her under. That’s how I’d sail, if I knowed that Black Jake was a-sailing after me.”