Читать книгу Sven and his Friends - Hans K. Maeder - Страница 3

"Let’s build the Kronborg castle” Börge proposed.

"Fine” answered Sven, "if you can remember how it looks."

It was the next day, and the boys were on the beach at Suederoog. After the long walk from Pellworm they rested for a few hours, eaten a huge meal, and then rushed down to the sea. Sven thought this was the loveliest beach he had ever seen. There was sand for miles - fine and pale silver grey. It was firm and hard down near the sea, but above the high-water mark it was soft and shifting, and coarse grasses had been planted in clumps to hold it together.

The sun was hot and sparkling that afternoon and all along the beach were little groups of boys in their bathing trunks, digging busily, for Herman and the other leader had announced that they would award prizes next day for the best three sandcastles.

Sven started to dig the moat, and Börge went down to the sea with his pail for water to keep the sand moist and firm.

"I say Sven” he called, as he came puffing up the beach, "Francois is making the Eiffel Tower."

Francois and two other French boys were now in the same group as Sven and Börge who were the only Danish boys left in it. The boys had all been divided into new groups that morning so that in each there would be boys from every country. There was now an English university student in charge of Sven’s group; who was called Jim Hutchinson.

Börge squatted down beside Sven and began modeling the sand with his hands and patting the walls smooth with his spade. He worked fast. Already Sven could recognize the great courtyard, and the tower at the corner.

"What are the Czech boys making, Börge?" asked Sven.

"Oh, you know that castle in Prague. I never can pronounce it."

"The Hradcin?" suggested Sven.

"That’s it, though I still can’t say it," laughed Börge. "And the English boys are at work on Westminster Abbey, I think. Pity we haven’t any Americans here. I’d love to see some sand skyscrapers!" Börge threw himself back on the sand and lay with his eyes closed enjoying the sun on his face. Suddenly he was up on his feet again.

"Come and have a swim Sven; I’m so hot."

Sven sat back on his heels. "You know Börge, I don’t think I will. I want to do some more building."

"All right. See you later." And Börge was off and into the sea.

Sven worked on. Presently two shadows fell across the castle and he looked up to see the English boys from his group. Sven smiled shyly, and said hello. This was the first time he had spoken to them.

"Hello" said the shorter boy. "I’m Fred Roberts. What’s your name?"

Sven told them, and after they had each practiced saying the foreign names Fred asked Sven what he was building.

Sven stood up and began to explain, very seriously, trying hard to get his English right. “This is the castle of Kronborg in Denmark. It was the castle of Hamlet. "

"Hamlet?" said George, the other English boy. ”I thought his castle was called Elsinore.”

"Oh no," replied Sven, "It is certainly Kronborg. I have been there with Börge and his father. I saw the tower where Hamlet poisoned his father."

"But I’m just doing Hamlet at school" George persisted. "Shakespeare, I mean" he added just a little condescendingly, in case Sven didn’t know. Sven shook his head. George began to get excited. "Dash it all Sven, I’m English. I should know what Shakespeare wrote."

This was too much for Sven’s patience. “And I’m Danish. I should know where Hamlet lived. He was a real Danish prince before your old Shakespeare ever heard of him." The words came tumbling out, and it didn’t make very good sense to George and Fred because it was half in English and half In Danish.

None of the boys noticed Jim Hutchinson join the group, till they heard a hearty laugh. "Can I help in this international dispute?" he inquired still laughing.

Suddenly the boys all felt very awkward. George spoke first. "Jim....of course it ‘really doesn’t matter, but Hamlet’s castle was called Elsinore, wasn’t it?"

"That’s what Shakespeare called it," replied Jim, "and the real historic Hamlet’s castle in Denmark is called Kronborg. Haven’t you ever heard of the same thing having two names, you young idiots?"

Everybody began to laugh and Jim grabbed Sven and George each by a tuft of hair and gave it a playful pull. "Let’s all go and have a swim," he suggested.

"Oh yes" said Sven, "and we’ll find Börge and he can explain all. He built most of the castle, you know," he explained to Fred as they ran down the beach.

* * *

By noon the following day all the castles were finished. The boys were sitting in a large semi-circle on the beach waiting for the judges to announce the prize-winner. Three of the counselors had formed the committee of judges, and they had spent most of the morning walking round the beach looking at the castles with a swarm of excited boys on their heels. Now they were consulting their notes and adding up the points.

Sven wished they would hurry up. He was beginning to get hungry. George, who was lying beside him on the sand, pulled at his shirt sleeve. "Look Sven, Pierre Dernier’s just going to speak — he’s going to say you and Börge have won first prize!"

"Sh-sh George, you know we haven’t a chance. Listen!"

Monsieur Dernier, the chief judge, was beginning to talk: "Well, boys, first I want to congratulate you on the splendid buildings you have made in the sand. We cannot all visit each other’s country, but I feel that this morning on this beach here I have been to Rome and London, to Budapest, Vienna ..... “Sven looked across at Börge. He was sitting with his eyes shut and Sven couldn’t decide whether he was listening intently to Monsieur Dernier or taking a nap. Suddenly Börge opened his eyes, caught Sven’s glance, and gave him a sly wink. But Pierre Dernier’s voice was going on: "..... And so I am happy to tell you that we have decided first prize should go to" — a maddening pause —"Anton Hnatuk and his friends from Czechoslovakia, for their building of the Hradcin in Prague!"

Everyone clapped and cheered and the boys near Anton leaned across to pat his back and shake his hand. At last they were quiet again and Pierre Dernier went on:

"Second prize, Sven Hansen and Börge Lingstrom for their model of the Kronborg Castle."

George let out a cheer and gave Sven a thump that nearly knocked him flat on his face. Just what happened after that he hardly knew. He heard everyone clapping and laughing but somehow all the noises and color around him melted into a haze through which he suddenly saw Börge’s face grinning at him. He was too excited even to hear who had won third prize.

Now all the boys were scrambling to their feet and Herman was leading the way back to the camp for lunch.

There was always a lot of noise at mealtimes. The boys ate in a large building with a high thatched roof supported by rafters. It was originally built as a barn, and during this lovely summer weather the wide double doors always stood open. The sunshine streamed in on the boys as they sat on forms at long wooden tables. Some martins had built a nest under the eaves and sometimes they flew into the barn and circled swiftly round, high up in the shadows. Then they would fly twittering out into the sun again.

Somehow everyone seemed to talk very loudly at mealtimes, perhaps in an effort to be heard above the clatter of mugs and plates on the bare tables, perhaps because they were all talking different languages, and when people don’t quite understand you, it’s always a temptation to shout.

George was shouting now, across the table; "I say Sven, Herman told me some of the fellows are going haying this afternoon.”

"What is "haying”?" inquired Sven.

"You know, gathering up hay."

"I don’t know what is ‘hay’." That was a new English word for Sven.

George explained and also told him the other things he had heard about the haying. Hay was almost the only crop on the little island of Suederoog, as it was on all the Frisian Islands. But it was a very important crop, because the islanders needed it to feed their cattle during the winter. The island houses, like the one house on Suederoog where the boys had their camp, were built with high roomy attics and these were used to store the hay. In a good summer the islanders cut the hay as often as three times. "Do you want to go haying, George?" inquired Sven. He was so fond of the beach that he wasn’t sure he liked the idea.

"Oh yes, Sven," replied George, "It’s really good. You’ll see. They have quite a special way of doing it here. I was watching them this morning."

The boys took it in turns to help with the haymaking, and it was several days before Sven and the rest of his group had their first taste of it.

Hans Koenig, who lived on the island, was in charge, and he led the boys off to a meadow where the hay had been cut several days before and had been spread out to dry. First he chose six boys, gave them large wooden rakes, and showed them how to rake the hay into long heaps running the whole length of the meadow, like walls of hay. Then he led the other boys over to a corner where the horses were standing. The horses were harnessed together in pairs, and attached to their harness were two long stout ropes. The ropes were fastened to each end of a heavy pole which lay on the ground behind them. It was long and thick, almost as big as a telegraph pole.

Hans explained to the boys what they were all going to do. He himself would drive the horses forward, making them walk one on each side of the wall of hay.’ They would drag the pole along behind them, and so all the hay would collect in front of it into a huge pile.

"Now this is where you boys come in," went on Hans in his slow German, "I want you to ride on the pole and keep it down on the ground. Will you do that?"

Sure they would!

"And one other thing." Hans stepped inside the triangle formed by the pole and the two ropes, and took hold of a third rope which was also fastened to the harness but hung loosely in the center. He walked back to the pole and looped it underneath. "Now I want a strong boy to volunteer to hold the rope."

Börge’s hand shot up at once. Hans explained that this rope in the center was for holding the hay down, and as the pile of hay got higher and higher Börge must pay it out slowly, always keeping it taut.

Well, at last they were off. Börge got on to the pole and held the rope. Sven jumped on beside him and hung on to him, while George, Anton, Francisco and two others found spaces on the pole and clung to each other and the side ropes.

Hans called to the horses and they started up. The pole slid and bumped over the short grass and Börge clung desperately on to the rope while the rest of the team clung on to him. It wasn’t very easy to stay on the pole and there were shouts of laughter as one after another toppled off and ran to catch up and jump on again.

By the time they had reached the end of the row the hay had piled up level with their faces. By now too, they were quite good at staying on the pole and even at moving to and fro along it so as to hold the hay in place. Soon they were riding the pole like tight-rope walkers and shouting to Hans to go faster. Sven thought it was rather like water-skiing. He volunteered for extra duty at hay making whenever another boy dropped out.

He didn’t have to wait long. Next morning at breakfast, Jim Hutchinson, the leader of Sven’s group, told the boys that Hans Koenig needed a lot of help that day – as many teams of boys as he had pairs of horses.

"Why, Jim?" asked Francisco.

"Well, as a matter of fact," replied Jim rather slowly, "I think Hans is afraid we may have a spot of bad weather."

Sven’s mind flashed back to the journey on the boat and the old fisherman’s yarns.

"Oh Jim!" he gasped, "do you mean a storm?"

Jim laughed. "Well, maybe."

As soon as the sun had cleared away the last wisp of morning mist, the boys went racing across the meadow to meet Hans. After the first chorus of good mornings, Sven asked the question he had been wondering about ever since breakfast.

"Hans," he asked, "are we going to have a storm?"

Hans screwed up his light blue eyes and looked out to sea.

"Yes, I think so, but not for some hours yet.”

"But what will happen to us, Hans? Will the sea come right over the island?"

Hans’ voice sounded very calm and reassuring. "Oh no, I don’t think we’ll have a bad storm. We hardly ever do, in the summer. In fact, it may not come to anything at all, if the wind changes. But I don’t like the looks of it, and if we get some rain and a rather high sea, all this good hay will get wet and then we’d have to start spreading and drying it all over again. So come on boys, let’s get to work!"

And work they did. Load after load was piled up beside the house and pitched up into the attic, or made into a neat haystack and covered with a tarpaulin.

It was a terribly hot day, still and sultry. As Sven bumped along on the pole, he could feel little trickles of sweat running down his back, and soon prickly little bits of hay had got inside his shirt too. He longed to rush down to the beach and dash into the cool blue water. Instead he threw himself down for a few moments, on a soft pile of hay. That felt hotter still, but it was so soft and comfortable that Sven would soon have been asleep if George hadn’t called out to him: "Come on Sven, you old slacker, it’s your turn with the rope!"

At last Hans called a halt. Most of the hay was in and the dew was falling, so they had to stop. Sven looked away across the acres of bare meadow and turned to Börge.

"Now the storm can come if it wants to!" he cried, "We’ve got our hay in."

That evening after supper the boys all begged Herman to tell them a story. He was a splendid story-teller. They all sprawled out on the floor and waited for him to begin.

Herman had been out all day haymaking with the boys, but he didn’t seem tired. While he was considering which story he should tell he looked all round the room. They were in a place everybody called the "lamp-room"; its wooden beams were hung with old lamps and gleaming brass lanterns from ships - many of them from ships that had been wrecked. Herman pointed to a heavy round lantern hanging in one corner. "That lantern belonged to a Swedish coasting vessel, the "Christiania," he began, "and I’m going to tell you her story. It happened about ten years ago....”

Herman spoke slowly, in German. Now and then he would put in a sentence of French or English to help all the boys to understand. There was a tense silence in the lamp-room as Herman told of the Christiania. One wild night she was stranded on the sand bar which runs out from Suederoog towards the open sea. The pounding waves soon turned her over and cast her crew of seven into the sea.

The men had nothing but their lifebelts to keep them afloat and in the darkness they couldn’t tell which way the land laid. Enormous waves swept over them and their shouts were drowned in the whistling wind. Just as they began to lose all hope of being saved one of the men saw a light and they all struggled towards it. When they got nearer they found they were at the foot of a sort of tower. All they could make out in the darkness was a ladder leading upwards. They pulled themselves up, the stronger helping the exhausted ones, until they found themselves in a little wooden room. It stood there above the storm like a little house on stilts, and the light from its lantern streamed out in all directions across the tossing water. Here Herman paused.

"Can you guess where that house is?" he asked. Anton spoke up; "I think I saw it yesterday when I walked across to the other side of the island.”

"That’s right, Anton" replied Herman, "and one day when it’s calm we’ll ask Hans if we may go and see it. We’ll have to walk across the sand spit at low tide." And Herman went on to tell the boys how the people of the island always kept this little safety-tower stocked with food and candles for shipwrecked sailors, and how one of the islanders went out every few days to fill the lamp and make sure it was still burning.

As Sven fell asleep that night he thought he heard the wind howling in the rigging and his comfortable little bunk seemed to sway and toss on an angry sea.