The Twisted Shadow. Edith Dorian
house, Judy, just ahead of us where the road stops. Bold Dick’s Anchorage is off to the left.”
He parked by a clump of bayberry and gave her a hand out. “Good night! I didn’t even warn you about heels. Can you make it? From here on in, there’s only a path.”
Judy held a slender foot out in the moonlight “Shells,” she said, nonchalantly. “Lead on, Ranger. I’m the Tall Gal type.”
But when the path sloped down to the beach, her feet shot out from under her, and she landed ignominiously in Tim’s arms.
“Just about the right height, at that,” he remarked, smiling at her. “Almost to the top of my nose.”
“Then I’ll remember not to eat the wrong side of the mushroom like Alice in Wonderland,” Judy promised demurely, but she pushed herself back on her own feet in a hurry and got busy helping launch the skiff.
“We’re heading for the Ellen B.,” Tim told her as they rowed across the path of the moon. “She’s not as beautiful as the Golden Falcon—the raking spars of that clipper would be hard to beat—but she’s an interesting old gal. She’s practically a twin of Bold Dick’s Sea Hawk.”
Shipping his oars, he let the skiff drift in toward the sturdy hull of the old schooner, and Judy studied it curiously.
“I wonder how anyone knows,” she speculated. “Would it be from the design, Tim?”
“That would tell an expert like Captain Matt,” he said, nodding, “but the captain didn’t have to do any brooding over this one. His ancestors built both ships, and he has their specifications in the old shipyard records. Besides, Mr. Winter has an oil painting of the Sea Hawk, done the year she finally went down off the Grand Banks, and the Ellen’s a dead ringer for her. There were only five years between the end of the Sea Hawk and the launching of the Ellen. This tough old lady dates back to 1830.”
Judy caught her breath. “A hundred and twenty-five years and still afloat!” she said, awed.
“Well, the Constitution and the Charles Morgan are still afloat, too,” Tim reminded her. “The Morgan had been chasing whales for eighty years when she retired in 1921, and Old Ironsides fought in the War of 1812. If a Yankee built a ship, he put backbone in her.”
“You can say that again,” Judy conceded, but she raised a quizzical eyebrow as she looked from the old schooner back to Tim. “I’m drinking all this in avidly,” she assured him. “Only curiosity is killing me. I thought you were a snake man! How come the seagoing lore?”
“Captain Matt,” Tim admitted, grinning. “The Chief got him to come over here and lecture to us so we wouldn’t sound like morons about ‘iron men and wooden ships.’ We took notes, no less. Just scratch me anywhere and I’ll exude information!” They were rowing past the Golden Falcon’s figurehead on their way back to the beach, and he nodded up at her lofty spars. “Get your landlord to show you the scale model of this clipper he’s building for Mr. Winter, Judy. He brought it over here to use for demonstration, and its rigging drove us all plain nuts.”
“So that’s what Miss Leonard meant when she said Captain Matt’s hobby was ship models,” Judy exclaimed. “I thought she meant he just collected them.”
“It’s the other way around,” Tim assured her. “People collect his—and how! When you get aboard the Ellen sometime, take a look at a little model of a fishing schooner with a nest of dories on her deck. It’s one of his, and a yachtsman over in the Harbor offered eight hundred dollars for it last week. All I hope is that some light-fingered tourist doesn’t get a notion that it’d make a swell souvenir.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.