Читать книгу The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom - Margaret Mahy - Страница 6
Оглавление“Help!” went the Captain’s first call.
If an ordinary person had shouted. “Help!” the cry would have dissolved into the Antarctic air. But the Captain had called out in a ghost voice. His first cry flew like a stormy petrel across the islands and salt seas of the great Southern Ocean. It flew above schools of whales and crossed the secret airy routes of the wandering albatross until it came to New Zealand, a country made up of islands, jam-packed with possible listeners.
Most ears are closed to a ghost cry. All the same, some ghost cries can be very persistent. This one searched for a special ear – an ear that would welcome it and invite it in, and at last it found one. It curled its way through the caves and tunnels of this ear, and into the sleeper’s dreams.
“Help!” The explorer Corona Wottley sat up in bed, running her long fingers through her carroty curls as she did so.
“That’s funny!” she cried aloud. “That’s very strange. Was that someone calling for help?” Her head was swimming with visions of ice and snow. “Albino penguins!” she exclaimed. “It’s ages since I wondered about that colony of albino penguins. There were lots of stories about it, but no one has ever found out if it really exists. And what about the lost ship… what was it called? Yes! The Riddle! I haven’t thought about The Riddle for years either. Why not? Bonniface Sapwood may have given up searching for it, the great big wimp, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to give up. If I set out now – immediately, if not sooner – and if I am strong and brave and determined, I might be the explorer who finds The Riddle. And I could look for the albino penguins at the same time. Suppose I found The Riddle and the white penguins too. That would show Bonniface Sapwood he isn’t the only Antarctic explorer in the world.”
She leaped out of bed and began to do a few warming-up exercises to get herself fit for the Antarctic, where warming-up exercises are particularly important.
