hates cats. But why not introduce the cat to Sofia Alexandrovna?
"No," thought Alex. "He's too independent. He won't get on there with
her Kuzya and Roly-Poly."
"The thing is..." he began embarrassedly.
"Yes, I understand," interrupted the cat. "Everyone has worries of
his own. I don't mind. It just gets my back up when people start spitting
after me. How can I go anywhere? I can't fly through the air, can I?"
"Through the air?" repeated Alex, cheering up at an idea that
suddenly flashed through his mind. "Listen, puss! Just keep going
straight and you'll come to a plane in the grass and a boy sitting by it.
He's not just a boy, but also a pilot and he gets terribly bored flying
by himself. If you tell him you're looking for a companion, he'll be
really pleased."
"You think so?" asked the cat and even quivered with excitement.
"Will he take me?"
"Yes, I think so. After all, you're small enough not to need a
separate seat."
"Of course! I can curl up into a tiny ball! Thanks! I'm off!"
The cat went down on all fours, swished its tail and streaked through
the grass like black lightning. The next moment he vanished and only the
tops of the grass swayed after him.
Alex looked after it and then began walking towards Vetrogorsk. For a
few minutes he felt annoyed with himself as if he had done something
wrong. But then he began thinking about the clipper and forgot everything
else.
Vetrogorsk began with a small avenue lined with great knotty elms
and oaks. You could hardly see the houses in the shadows. The lights from
the windows of the small turrets and upper storeys filtered through the
leaves onto the cobblestones, which gleamed like the scales of an
enormous fish. Night had already descended and the sky was a very dark
blue.
It turned out to be a long street running up and down overgrown
slopes, under flickering lights and over little hunch-backed bridges
beneath which water babbled and frogs croaked.
At last Alex came out into a small round square which was lit up by
lamps. In its centre stood a tall white statue of a fisherman tightly
gripping the fragment of an oar in one hand and carrying a huge fish like
a shark on his shoulder. All the surrounding houses had balconies,
galleries and small stairways. A small tram with laughing passengers
clanked and vanished into the dark slit of a side-street.
A vaguely familiar salty smell was coming from the side-streets. At
regular intervals yellow gleams of light flickered on and off the stone
fisherman's sou'wester and light walls of the upper storeys. Alex
realised it was the light of a lighthouse and the smell of the sea.
He looked round for someone who could tell him the way to the Ship
Museum but there were not many people about. Then he heard some cheerful
sounds behind him and was surrounded by a crowd of little boys.
He was startled at first but then realised there was nothing to be
afraid of as the boys looked very friendly. A tall, slim, dark-haired boy
said to Alex as if he knew him, "Come with us! We're going to look for
Steve the talking dolphin because he knows where the old steamer
'Vesuvius' sank with all the New-Year's tree decorations on board. We've
been told Steve's spending the night in Yellow Bay. Come on! It just so
happens we need one more man in our crew."
"Never mind that! You're welcome anyway!" chimed in a round-headed
little lad in very long baggy trousers and striped tee-shirt.
He had large freckles and two teeth missing. "Come on," he repeated.
"Steve will give us a ride. He's as fast as a rocket!"
He lisped and so it sounded more like: "Steve will gith uth a ride.
He'th ath fatht ath a rocket!"
The others started laughing but not at all spitefully and then the
tall boy spoke up again, "It's such a wonderful evening, we're bound to
have some kind of adventure."
Many of the boys were carrying oars and two had a long pole wrapped
in tarpaulin on their shoulders. Alex guessed it was a sail.
"No, I can't," he said. "Thanks but I really can't, honest. I've got
some important business and hardly any time to spare."
They looked disappointed but not offended, and the little lad in the
stripped shirt said, "That'th a terrible shame."
Alex asked the boys how to get to the Ship Museum and they explained:
"First go down that side-street, then across a large park and through a
hole in the hedge and you'll see it straight ahead."
The park was like a magic forest and the path was overgrown with
creepers. Bats flitted through the air and green lights were glimmering
over the lawns like swarms of butterflies. Alex glimpsed a little yellow
latticed window for a moment. Someone was striding after him. Every now
and then branches crackled around him. Suddenly two shots rang out and a
voice shouted out cheerfully, "Missed, Crooked Shark! Now it's my turn!"
Then a little bell tinkled.
Several times Alex was hailed: "Hey, you boy, stop! Do you want to
come with us?" But he kept going and said nothing in reply for he felt
that if he looked round, he was bound to be distracted from his goal by
some adventure or other.
At last he got to the hedge, found the hole and crawled out onto a
stone pavement.
He spotted the museum at once. It was an old mansion which looked
like a large church except it did not have domes. A real ship's mast with
little lights loomed over its facade. Lights were on inside the museum
too.
Alex ran across the street and onto its porch.
It had very tall oak doors with wooden carvings of sailing ships and
bronze door handles shaped like crossed anchors.
Alex was sure the doors would be locked but still took hold of a
bronze anchor and pulled. The door moved heavily and soundlessly and a
narrow strip of light fell on the porch.
"They must have forgotten to lock up," thought Alex.
What should he do now? After all, he had not come all this way by
ship and plane just to give up at the last moment.
He opened the door wider, slipped inside and found himself in a hall
dimly lit by a large patterned lanterns, which, he guessed at once, came
from old ships. To the right against a wall lay a huge black anchor and a
grey puppy was fast asleep by its massive base. Its ear kept twitching
but it did not wake up.
To the left a semi-circular staircase led up into the darkness above
the lanterns. Sea ropes ran up its sides instead of banisters. They were
almost as thick as Alex and sagged heavily.
A white sculpture was gleaming by the staircase. Alex went up to it
and saw it was a plaster-cast of a boy on a grey rock. You could tell he
had just scrambled out of the sea for he was kneeling on one knee and
holding a bottle he had fished out of the waves. It was a real bottle and
through its bumpy greenish glass he could see a little three-masted ship
inside.
The boy was staring thoughtfully at the bottle, perhaps trying to
guess how the tiny frigate had got inside or, perhaps, on the contrary,
wondering how he could get it out without breaking the mysterious old
bottle.
"He was hunting after a little ship, too," thought Alex. "Just like
me." But the boy did not look like Alex. If anything, he looked more like
the little Pilot.
Alex started climbing the staircase. Vast ship flags from every
country and age were hanging above it and one gently brushed against his
shoulder.
It became lighter further up. The stairway curved round smoothly and
led Alex into a high-ceilinged hall whose walls were hung with sombre
paintings with white sails gleaming dimly in tarnished gold frames.
And the walls beneath them were lined with brown oak steering-wheels,
huge bronze compasses on lacquered stands and piles of ring-buoys marked
with Russian and foreign lettering.
In a pier between two narrow latticed windows Alex caught sight of a
glass-case containing bottles of all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes
with coloured wax in their necks. Lying next to them were semi-decayed
crinkled scraps of paper and rags with very faint letters on them. These
bottles had evidently been fished out of the sea and the messages inside
them, of course, described shipwrecks and treasures.
Over the glass-case hung a mighty copper bell from a sailing ship
with the prominent letters "Azimut" written along its rim.
Then Alex caught sight of a mermaid (and even started with fright)
but she turned out to be made of wood. In days of yore she had adorned
the prow of a large clipper but was now nestling in a corner of the
museum hall between a case of thick books about the sea and a bronze
ship's cannon.
All in all it was very fascinating but for the deep silence all
around, and Alex almost jumped when he heard a pattering sound behind
him.
It was the puppy which had been asleep beside the anchor. It gazed up
at Alex and began wagging its comma-like tail. Alex was delighted because
two is always company and it was very eerie in the empty museum and, to
tell the truth, rather frightening.
He walked into another room where it was not so quiet because ticking
sounds were coming from everywhere - some quiet like buzzing insects,
others loud like thudding hammers and others still resonant like twanging
springs. Some ticked fast and other slow, and all the sounds were mixed
together. There were clocks everywhere - on the walls, in glass-cases and
on the window-sills; large clocks from mess-room and admirals' quarters;
navigators' small chronometers; bronze, china, cast-iron and ivory clocks
and clocks shaped like ships, lighthouses, steering-wheels and
life-buoys...
Shiny brass telescopes and strange-looking instruments lay between
faded yellow maps in glass-cases.
"I wonder where the ship models are?" thought Alex.
He walked round a huge globe girded with bronze rings and found
himself in another room. The puppy kept close at his heels.
There were no models here either. The walls were hung with guns and
standing and grinning in the corner was a jolly pirate. No, not a real
one. He was dressed in a long green jacket, brown boots with tops, and
the ends of a brightly-coloured scarf were sticking out from under his
tattered cocked hat. Hilts of knives and pistols were jutting out of his
belt, as befitted a pirate, and in his hand he was clutching a yataghan
which looked like a curved hack-saw.
The pirate's face was, well, very pirate-like, although it was, in
fact, grinning.
"I wouldn't like to meet him in a dark street..." thought Alex.
The puppy evidently didn't take a liking to the pirate either for it
crouched on its front paws, growled ineffectively and suddenly started
barking so loudly that echoes rang out all over the building.
"Be quiet, you daft thing!" ordered Alex in fright.
The puppy stopped yapping and gave him a crafty look.
There was a sound of steps.
"Well," thought Alex, "Now I'm really going to get into trouble."
An inconspicuous door opened in the far corner, and in strode a tall
man in a dark blue jacket with naval buttons.
"Well, now he's going to give me an earful..." thought Alex again.
"So we have a visitor!" said the man. "A guest at such a late hour.
You obviously like the museum very much?"
"Yes, I do..." replied Alex hesitantly. "Only I haven't had a very
good look round yet. I'm here on business."
"Really! Important business?"
"Yes."
"Well, tell me about it."
"So you... you work here, do you?"
"I'm the Museum's Curator."
Chapter Twelve
Why hadn't Alex guessed who he was at once?
It was because he had imagined the Curator as being old, grey-haired,
important-looking and bearded. This man, however, was still quite young,
trim and lean, and looked like the P.T. teacher from Alex's school, only
slightly taller.
And he had wonderful eyes. Even in the dim light you could see that
he had very light eyes like sea-water pierced with the sun's rays. And
they did not look at all stern. Alex stopped feeling nervous.
"So you're here on important business, are you?" the Curator asked
again.
"Yes... Is it really true that all the models of ships that get lost
find their way to you?"
The Curator nodded.
"Yes, it is. But that's only true of the good ones if they've been
lovingly made. The bad ones perish on the way."
Alex glanced round and said, "I've looked everywhere but I can't see
a single little ship here..."
"No, they're not here. Come with me."
The Curator took Alex's hand and led the way.
Through the small door was a spiral staircase with a bronze railing
and resounding iron steps which led down into what seemed like a deep
round well. Alex even became dizzy as they walked down it.
At the bottom they came to a semi-circular door. The Curator heaved
it open with his shoulder and told him to go in.
Alex found himself in a large underground chamber with mighty pillars
and a vaulted ceiling which contained a dazzling treasure trove of ships.
His eyes first fell on some huge models of frigates, as large as
rowing-boats. Their masts, three metres high, almost touched the large
ships' lanterns hanging on chains from the stone vaults. Further away
were tables and glass-cases containing smaller models of brigantines,
galleons, narrow streamlined cruisers and destroyers. Shiny white liners
and trading ships gleamed through the cobweb-like rigging of schooners
and caravels. A pencil-lenght submarine was standing next to a corvette,
one and a half metres long. An atomic ice-breaker's mighty body loomed
among blue-glass hummocks of ice, and blazing behind it was the winged
sail of a Malayan catamaran...
"There must be at least a thousand of them here," said Alex in a
whisper. "I never dreamed there could be so many in the world."
"There're many more in the world," replied the Curator. "But here we
have the best examples of miniature fleet."
They walked slowly past the glass-cases, tables and shelves housing
models. Their steps and voices were muffled by the porous stone walls.
"Miniature ships have existed as long as real ones have," said the
Curator slowly. "After hollowing out the very first boat in the world,
man immediately set about making a miniature copy of it. Perhaps he hung
it over his hearth to appease the spirits or gave it to his child to play
with. Who knows... These tiny boats are now found in ancient caves and
burial mounds... Then people built galleys and caravels, and along with
the large sailing vessels appeared others, only a hundred times smaller.
The same's true of brigs and clippers. And next came steamers, cruisers
and atomic ships... The old ships were demolished or wrecked in storms or
battles, burned down or were smashed to pieces against rocks. But their
little twins survived... Ignorant folk regard them as toys and nothing
but a complete waste of time, but they don't understand anything, my
friend...
"These little ships serve a great purpose: they inspire children to
dream of far-off islands and azure coves, storms and trade-winds. They
sometimes bring a smack of the sea to places which have never felt a sea
breeze. When a little boy picks up a model ship, runs his fingers across
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