Читать книгу Kensuke's Kingdom - Michael Morpurgo - Страница 20

more in a couple of years at sea, than he ever would in that monkey school of his. Promise.’

She took a sip of tea, and then nodded slowly. ‘All right,’ she said, and I saw she was smiling. ‘Why not? Go ahead then. Buy her. Buy the boat.’

‘I already have,’ said my father.

Of course it was madness. They knew it, even I knew it, but it simply didn’t matter. Thinking back, it must have been a kind of inspiration driven by desperation.

Everyone warned us against it. Gran came visiting and stayed on board. It was all quite ridiculous she said, reckless, irresponsible. She was full of doom and gloom. Icebergs, hurricanes, pirates, whales, supertankers, freak waves – she heaped up horror upon horror, thinking to frighten me and so frighten off my mother and father. She succeeded in terrifying me all right, but I never showed it. What she didn’t understand was that we three were already bound together now by a common lunacy. We were going, and nothing and no one could stop us. We were doing what people do in fairytales. We were going off to seek adventure.

To begin with it all happened much as my father