Читать книгу The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom - Margaret Mahy - Страница 5
Оглавление“Cold!” that someone muttered, hugging himself. “I’m so cold!”
Although he was in a cold place, it wasn’t the cold around him he was feeling. The cold about which he was complaining seemed to be welling out of his very heart. At first that was the only thing he really knew. He certainly wasn’t sure who he was or even what he was (though a lot of people feel like this when they wake from deep sleep). He struggled to open his eyes properly and, at long last, he did open them, looking out into a deep and ancient darkness stained with strange blue light. When he turned his head, this light turned too, as if it were somehow watching him. And horrakapotchkin! What was that directly above him? Long teeth, preparing to bite him in two? The fangs of a ferocious beast?
Frozen with cold! Frozen with terror! the waking man thought. But is the world freezing me or am I freezing the world?
But the faint blue light seemed to be soaking into those teeth. Of course! They were not really teeth. They were icicles. The man took a deep breath.
“Who am I?” he asked aloud. “Where am I? What am I doing here? And why?” He shook some of these questions out of his spinning head. “Pull yourself together!” he told himself sternly. “One thing at a time! Now! Who am I? I am… I am!…”
“The Captain!” said a voice in his head – his own voice. “You are the Captain!”
“Right!” he said aloud. “I remember now! I am the Captain! Well, if I’m the Captain I should be up and doing, not lying around in the dark.” And, flattening himself, he began sliding out from under those glassy teeth. To his amazement, he felt, as he wriggled and slid, that he was much lighter than he had somehow imagined he would be. Indeed, it was as if he weighed nothing at all. This unexpected lightness unbalanced him. He wobbled! He swung one arm into the air. Immediately, the longest tooth of ice plunged greedily into it. The Captain screwed up his eyes, expecting blood and pain, but there was no blood, and no pain either. He lowered his arm and the glassy tooth slid out of it without leaving a single mark even on the sleeve of his heavy jacket. Flattening himself once more, he wriggled out from under the toothy icicles, swung his legs sideways, stood up carefully and looked out into the darkness.
The strange blue glow was slowly eating into the shadows around him. It seemed to be coming from him, seeping out of the folds and wrinkles of his clothes. And suddenly the Captain knew exactly where he was. He had been lying on his very own bunk, in his very own cabin, on his very own ship – the gallant Riddle.
His fingers, muffled in three pairs of fine woollen gloves, crept across the fur collar of his great jacket. Horrakapotchkin! His ears had disappeared. But then he realised he was wearing his balaclava and two knitted hats, and that his ears were tucked quite safely beneath them. He fingered the high collar of his natural wool jersey and below that his shirt, the top of his long johns and then not just one but three layers of underwear. He was searching for his whalebone good-luck charm – a charm he had carved and polished himself during his very first Antarctic winter night, back before he rose to the rank of captain. He had shared many adventures with that charm and believed it had carried him safely through many dangers.
“Where’s my pendant?” he asked aloud. The sound of his own echoing voice frightened him. “Hang on! You’re going too fast!” he told himself in a stern whisper. “Begin again! Now, I’m the captain. Right! I’m in my cabin. Right! There’s my captain’s desk! What’s that lumpy thing sitting on it? Oh, it must be the ship’s logbook. But what’s happened to it? Oh, I see! It’s covered with ice. And it’s very thick ice. I must have been asleep for ages.” He puzzled for a moment, then shrugged and went on. “Never mind! What really matters is that my memory is rushing back safe and sound from wherever it has been.”
But this was where the Captain’s memory stopped rushing back. He found he had absolutely no idea of where in the Antarctic The Riddle might happen to be. “Look around!” he told himself sternly. “Work it out!” So he peered this way and that into the gloom, noticing there was ice underfoot and ice overhead, and at last he stood up and made for the cabin door which he tried to open. The blueish light moved with him.
But the door was iced shut. Why, he could not even turn the door handle! The Captain pushed hard. Nothing moved. He put his shoulder to the door and tried to jolt it open with good old-fashioned sailor-power.
Almost at once, he found himself standing on the other side of the door, looking back at it in surprise. Had it opened? No! Somehow, he seemed to have gone straight through it, ice and all. Odd! Very odd! He thumped it experimentally Bang! It seemed quite solid. He thumped harder and this time his hand sank deep into the ice and wood. The Captain pulled his hand free and frowned down at his faintly glowing, gloved fingers.
He shrugged. “Perhaps all doors are like that,” he murmured (though deep down he knew they weren’t). “I might have forgotten,” (though deep down he knew he hadn’t). “I’ve been fast asleep, and now it’s taking me a minute or two to remember the way things ought to be.”
Ahead he saw faint, blueish light coming down the companionway. Where were his officers? Where was his crew? Above all, where was his old friend, the First Mate, Escher Black? There wasn’t even the smallest cabin boy in sight. “All hands aft!” he shouted, just in case, but no one joined in with a cheery. “Aye aye, Sir!” He tried again. “Escher! Escher Black! Heave to, Escher!”
Silence!
“I’ve lost my pendant and I’ve lost my memory. I’ve lost my ship’s crew and I’ve lost my best friend,” he said to himself, climbing the companionway. “Something terrible must have happened for Escher Black would never desert me. But I mustn’t waste time worrying. I must remember! Now! Why does The Riddle look so strange? I do know ships don’t usually look like this. It really is a riddle.”
For the ship seemed hung about with frozen sails and veils of ice. Ice curved all the way around The Riddle. Ice arched over it, masts and all. I’m in a cave, thought the Captain (looking high, looking low as he worked things out). So he was.
The cave was dim, but not quite dark. Light, rather like the light that was still seeping out of the Captain himself, was finding its way through cracks and twisting shafts in the white, glittering roof. It was beautiful but very puzzling.
A slanting bridge, swollen with ice, connected the icy ship to the frozen land. That must be the gangplank, thought the Captain. I’ll just slither down it, walk off a little way and look back at The Riddle. If I put a bit of distance between me and the ship – if I look back at it – I might get some clues.
But he couldn’t walk down that gangplank. It wasn’t just the iciness of it. He couldn’t so much as set foot on it. Whenever he tried, the air seemed to thicken and freeze in front of him. Try as he might, he could not take a single step away from The Riddle.
Suddenly, the Captain understood! He wasn’t an ordinary captain any more. He was a ghost captain… a phantom… a spook! He wasn’t living on The Riddle (wherever it might happen to be), he was haunting it. He must be dead.
Just for a moment the Captain was terrified.
“Help!” he cried aloud. His ghost voice sprang away from him like a salt sea breeze. It swirled around the cave then shot off towards the bright, outside world. “Help! Help! Help!” the Captain cried three times. “Help! Help! Help!” went the echoes, on and on, up into the overhead tunnels through which the light was seeping into the cave, and out into the unknown space beyond.
The captain heard his own echoes fly outwards and upwards, but there was no reply. He was all alone, haunting a lost ship, in an unknown cave, somewhere in a desert of ice. He would have wept with despair if he hadn’t been the ghost of a particularly brave man.
What he did not know was that his three cries for help were already flying at great speed through the outside world, every one of them determined to find the right listener.
