Peter Duck. Arthur RansomeЧитать онлайн книгу.

      ^* The davits are a pair of little cranes for hoisting and lowering a boat. - CAPT. NANCY.

CHAPTER II

      RED-HAIRED BOY

      “WELL,” said Nancy, “how did you sleep?”

      “Very well, thank you,” said Titty, who was just bringing the parrot up on deck. Every one of them could have said the same. They had all slept very well, though they had been long in getting to sleep that first night. Voices had called from cabin to cabin. Top bunk spoke to lower bunk. Lower bunk had something urgent to say to top. Then there had been the creaking of the fenders between the schooner and the quay. There had been the noise of a passing tug. There had been the noise of someone in a rowing boat going home late at night to one of the ketches moored higher up the harbour. It had seemed almost wasteful to go to sleep, but, once they slept they had slept well, and waked up fresh and eager for their life aboard ship.

      Peggy and Susan were busy in the galley. Peggy had already been ashore for a quart of new milk. Captain Flint was shaving in the deckhouse. John was looking into Swallow, to see that all was ready. Captain Flint had promised that if there was time, they should lower her into the water and go sailing in Lowestoft harbour. John and Titty had been wanting to do that from the moment they saw her, but had hardly liked to suggest it when there was so much to be done in getting the Wild Cat ready for sea. Roger was prowling round the decks, looking at one thing after another. Gibber, the monkey, was up at the top of the foremast looking away towards the fishing vessels. So many masts all together reminded him perhaps of forests at home. Titty put the parrot’s cage on the roof of the deckhouse, and went round with Nancy to have a look at the little sailing boat.

      “She looks lovely in her new paint,” said Titty.

      “He’s given her new halyards, too,” said John.

      “There’s that man,” said Roger.

      They looked across the water to the black schooner. The man whom the porter had called Black Jake was leaning over her bulwarks and watching them.

      “Hullo! There’s a boy up the mast there. He isn’t as high up as Gibber though.”

      There was a red-haired boy, not as big as John, but a good deal bigger than Roger, halfway up the black schooner’s mainmast, and busy with a scrubbing brush and a pail.

      “He’s a cabin-boy or something,” said Nancy. “We’ve often seen him before.”

      “I bet he has a horrid time,” said John. “The porter said we were lucky not to be joining that ship.”

      But just then, there was a sudden stir on the black schooner’s deck. A man doing something at the foot of the foremast shouted something and pointed across towards the harbourmaster’s office. Black Jake started up and stared in that direction. Then he climbed up to the quay and set off, running, towards the swing bridge.

      “What’s the matter with him now?” said Roger.

      The next minute there was a general rush along the deck of the Wild Cat. John, Nancy, Titty, and Roger, as well as Black Jake, had seen the old sailor with a huge canvas kitbag on his back, who was hurrying along the quay past the Custom-House.

      They banged on the deckhouse door.

      “He’s back! He’s here! Mr. Duck’s back again!”

      Captain Flint came out in a hurry, drying his chin.

      “Good for him,” he said. “Where is he?”

      Peter Duck came to the edge of the quay and rolled his kitbag off his shoulder. It fell with a thud on the deck, and was followed by a bundle of oilskins. He came slowly down the ladder in his big sea-boots, that he was wearing to save having to carry them.

      “Come aboard, sir,” he said.

      “Fine,” said Captain Flint, shaking hands with him.

      “We’re all very glad to see you.”

      “You’re just in time for breakfast,” said Susan, putting her head out of the galley. “At least, it’ll be ready in two minutes. The water must be just going to boil.”

      Outside there, on deck, nobody, not even Captain Flint, could take his eyes from Peter Duck’s kitbag. It was an ordinary canvas kitbag, but it had a large coat of arms painted on it. There was a shield divided into four quarters. In one were three ducks swimming on curly waves. In another was a Norfolk wherry under full sail. In the third were three flying-fish, and in the fourth were three dolphins. Above the shield, by way of a crest, there was a capstan with a turn or two of rope about it, and below the shield in big clear letters was written “Admiral Peter Duck.”

      The old sailor laughed when he saw what they were looking at. “It’s a long while ago since that was painted,” he said. “We had three days’ calm in the China seas and all the fo’c’sle took to painting coats of arms, because the fish wasn’t biting.”

      “And are you really an admiral?” asked Titty.

      “Why not?” said Peter Duck. “The cook in that vessel was a rare good hand at dragons. So he painted dragons in all four corners of his shield and called himself the Emperor of China.”

      Just then Roger pulled at Titty. “There’s that man again,” he whispered. “He’s come right round.”

      Titty looked up, startled. The others, seeing her, looked up, too.

      A man was standing on the edge of the quay, right above them, a dark man, with black hair and big gold ear-rings that showed below his hair. He stood there glowering down at the little group on the deck of the Wild Cat. Peter Duck glanced up at him. The man opened his lips, but he did not say a word.

      “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” screamed the parrot in the sunshine.

      The man scowled, turned sharp round and walked hurriedly away.

      “What on earth’s the matter with that man?” said Captain Flint.

      “It’s the sort of man he is,” said Peter Duck.

      “Roger’s quite right,” said Titty. “He is the man who tried to grab the parrot when we were coming from the station.”

      “He didn’t exactly grab it,” said John. “He just got angry and wouldn’t leave us alone.”

      “He was watching us from the boat,” said Roger.

      “He owns her,” said Peter Duck.

      “Hullo, is she still there?” said Captain Flint. “The harbourmaster told me she was sailing last night.”

      “There he goes, over the bridge,” said Roger.

      A minute or two later they saw him come out on the south quay and speak to some men who were busy with the schooner’s warps. They saw him pointing across at the Wild Cat.

      “Why do they call him Black Jake?” Titty asked. “Is it because of his hair?”

      “Because of his heart,” said Peter Duck.

      “Queer sort of cove,” said Captain Flint. “Now, Mr. Duck, will you come along and stow your dunnage in the deckhouse. There’s a good big locker under that starboard bunk. And then we’ll see what sort of a breakfast these mates of ours are going to give us.”

      At that first breakfast with Peter Duck at one end of the long narrow table and Captain Flint at the other, everybody was rather shy. Captain Flint and Peter Duck talked a little, mostly about the Thermopylæ and old days in sailing ships, while everybody else watched and listened. As soon as it was over, work began in earnest. Every rope in the ship was to be overhauled, for one thing. “You don’t want gear going bad on you at sea,” Peter Duck had said, and Captain Flint agreed. There was no point in going out even