out of the burdocks and stood still, craning her neck.
"List-en!" shouted Vitalka loudly and clearly. "Catch the key! Lock
the door! You must lock the door! Then run and get the police! There're
some crooks in here!"
The key went whistling downwards and clanked loudly as it hit the
cobblestones. Vetka grabbed it fast.
Down below there was some cursing and trampling on the boards. After
hearing about the police, our thieves, who were evidently still in one
piece, were making down towards the door.
"Lock it quick!" yelled Vitalka. "Don't ask questions, just lock it!"
We leant over the railing as far as we could but we still could not
tell whether Vetka had managed to lock the door.
There was a lot of crashing and banging down below, but we could not
even see what Vetka was doing because she was concealed by the door's
overlapping. It felt as if simply ages had gone by when she finally
appeared in the sunlight, waving the key and shouting, "Done it!"
"Run and get the police!" yelled Vitalka.
"What about you?"
"We'll hang on! They won't get up here!"
I don't know what Vetka was thinking or what emotions were expressed
on her face because she was too far away, but without saying another
word, she tore off towards the monastery gates and we could hear the
staccato tapping of her shoes fading away.
Hollow blows rang out below: it was Edik and Fedya pounding on the
door.
We lay down on the floor and looked through the hole. After being in
the sunshine, we could not make anything out, but the pounding continued
and someone shouted, "Open up! You rats! We'll get you!"
I smirked. My fear had vanished for I was sure they would not get us.
How could they? They couldn't get up here because we had wrecked the
floor down below. And if they did, say, would they really dare lay a
finger on us? They'd get into even more trouble if they did! And they
couldn't escape because you could only break down a door like that with
the help of a cannon! How cleverly Vitalka had worked everything out!
I glanced at him and saw he was smiling and the freckles on his hose
were shining like rubbed brass. Mind you, he also had a bruise on his
nose, and soot on his cheeks and a hole in his shirt through which his
scratched tummy was showing.
"You look grand!" I said.
"You're not bad either," he replied jovially. "Auntie Valya's really
going to lay into us!"
I sat down on the edge of the hole and, casually dangling my legs,
started whistling a song from the film "The Last Inch":
In a far-off northern country
Where the winter's long and grim,
Splashing in the freezing water
is
a
tiny little
seal!
"Whistling, are you?" someone asked loudly below. "Well, just you
wait, you pests!"
I was at once seized with fear again, but Vitalka remarked in a
matter-of-fact manner, "Looks as if they're coming up here again..."
He went up to the railing, grabbed hold of a baluster and began
rocking it to and fro. As it was obviously rotten, it soon gave way and
cracked.
"Help me," said Vitalka.
I quickly came to his aid and we pulled the shoulder-high post out of
its base, and then did the same with another two but that was all we
could manage.
Balancing it in his arms, Vitalka said thoughtfully, "It makes quite
a good club."
Then we heard hushed voices and heavy breathing down below and looked
through the hole again. We saw Fedya and Edik making a ladder out of
broken beams on the third floor.
Edik looked up. A ray of light from a loophole fell on his face and I
was paralysed with fear. His face was really terrifying.
"Well, kiddies, you've had it. We're going to make mincemeat out of
you," he said hoarsely, and I saw that he was holding a long thin knife.
Why, it was mine! The one I'd dropped down the hole that first night!
For the first time Vitalka gave me anxious look. We were really in
trouble. The crooks were evidently so desperate that they would stop at
nothing.
The most natural thing for us to do now would have been to start
screaming with fear at the top of our voices. To this very day I am
proud that I didn't. And neither did Vitalka. Instead, he jumped up,
grabbed a baluster and hurled it at the crooks like a torpedo.
But it missed, bounced off a beam and crashed downwards.
The two crooks went on climbing up without even glancing at it. I
grabbed hold of another baluster.
"Wait. We've got to save our ammunition," said Vitalka gravely.
We had made a mistake. We should have gone down to the fourth floor
and repulsed our enemies while they were crawling shakily up their
makeshift ladder. But we had stayed at the top expecting a blue police
car to race into monastery yard at any moment as it always happens in a
good film.
But there was no help coming down below and only the tiny figures of
pedestrians flashed by in nearby streets. But we could not call to them
for help because they were too far away...
I have no idea how much time passed but probably not very much
because the clock had not struck once since our enemies appeared in the
belfry. It seemed to us, however, as if we had been up there all day.
Edik and Fedya climbed up to the fourth floor and we lost sight of
them behind a pile of wrecked beams and floorboards and could only hear
them swearing in hushed voices.
And these hushed voices gave me the shivers.
At long last Fedya's fair head popped up over the hatch. I aimed my
"torpedo" at him and he yelled and vanished. There was a loud thud down
below.
"He'll have a fine bump!" said Vitalka gleefully.
But there was no time to celebrate because at that moment Edik
crashed his way through the planks and up the hatch. He was scratched and
torn and in a tearing rage. What's more, he was holding my knife in his
fist.
All that was between us now was one floor and a strong ladder which
you could not possibly wreck.
Vitalka stood over the hatch, straddling his legs, raised his
"torpedo" and said shrilly, "Just you try coming near me, you thug..."
I looked round for a weapon such as a stick or a stone but there
weren't any! And there was still nobody in sight!
And even if we screamed at the top of our voices, would anyone hear
us?
However, despite the danger, I could not scream for some reason. No,
I could not imagine myself shrieking "help" right across the town!
But what about striking a bell? I jumped onto the railing and tried
to reach the bell hanging in the arched aperture. The largest one still
intact, it could certainly make a really startling din...
But how could I reach it? A thick rope had been attached to its
cast-iron tongue but all that was left of it now was a rotten scrap
hanging about two metres above us.
I held onto a brick projection and stood upright on the railing. All
of a sudden the brick moved under my fingers. The projection had
obviously been damaged in the blast forty years ago.
Afraid to lose my balance, I jumped down onto the floor and a brick
fell at my feet and broke into three pieces.
I grabbed one, took aim and hurled it at the bell as hard as I could!
Dong!..
And again! Dong!..
My ears became blocked and although I could see Vitalka was saying
something to me, I could not hear a word. I felt just as if the bell had
fallen and covered me with its booming dome. I squatted, shook my head
and picked the third bit of the brick off the floor.
Dong!..
I needed more stones. I jumped back onto the railing and began
pulling at a brick, but it would not budge. My fingers slipped and I
almost lost my balance, but straining my muscles hard, I managed to hang
on. I glanced down in desperation.
Our magic carpet was rising swiftly towards us. Breezy stood
intrepidly on it, his green shirt flapping in the wind.
"Vitalka! The carpet!" I yelled without hearing myself.
The carpet with its pilot hovered on a level with the banisters.
Vitalka spun round and, grinning from ear to ear, threw his weapon
down the hatch, roared with laughter and rushed towards us.
We flew down fast, keeping close to the belfry, skimmed over the
cobblestones, scaled the wall, slipped behind the steep bank and landed
on a secluded ledge among tall weeds.
My ears were still buzzing, and at first I could not make out what
Breezy was saying in an excited and breathless voice: "... trod on a bit
of glass and was limping... And she told me to fetch the police fast! But
what if the thugs got hold of you in the meantime, I thought. So I dashed
over to get the carpet!"
"So you've learnt how to fly it!" exclaimed Vitalka joyfully.
Breezy smiled and said, "I didn't even think about it. I just had to
rescue you. I climbed over the roof to your watchtower, dragged it out,
unrolled it and shouted, 'Off we go!' And then I just flew off as if I
wasn't even on it... But when I looked down I saw the carpet under me."
"Did anyone spot you?" Vitalka asked.
Breezy shook his head.
"I didn't fly straight. I first headed for the river and then kept
behind the steep bank. I know what I'm doing, you know."
"What do you know?" asked Vitalka. "You don't know anything! You have
no idea what a fantastic fellow you are!"
He slapped Breezy on the back and laughing loudly, pushed him onto
the carpet. And then I burst out laughing, too, and collapsed in a heap
on top of them. And we rolled about, shrieking with joy until we tumbled
off the carpet into the weeds. Then we calmed down and fell silent
because we suddenly remembered about Vetka cutting her foot.
"Has she cut it badly?" Vitalka asked.
"Not very," Breezy replied. "She just can't run very fast... What's
that? Up there. Can you hear?"
It was the horns and sirens of police cars blaring louder and louder
as they raced towards the tower.
Chapter Seventeen
We never did find out what exactly happened to Edik and Fedya. All
sorts of fantastic rumours were spread around the town, and someone even
said that a band of thieves had set up their den in the belfry and stored
huge quantities of gold and weapons there. According to many versions,
there had been a shoot-out between the crooks and the policemen. Some old
women whispered that the large bell struck all by itself to make people
remember their sins and catch the thieves in the belfry while they were
at it.
Vitalka, Vetka, Breezy and I listened to these stories and laughed up
our sleeves. True, we sometimes felt rather scared about someone finding
out about the carpet, but nobody ever did.
It was a good thing that Auntie Valya and Mum disliked rumours and
gossip, or else they would have quickly quessed that we simply had to be
involved in the belfry incident.
And we even felt rather sorry for Edik and Fedya when we imagined
them telling the police about the two boys who had climbed right up to
the bells and then suddenly vanished into thin air. And, of course,
nobody believed them! It's terrible when you're telling the truth and
nobody believes you.
A few days later the rumours began to die down, and the town
gradually forgot about the mysterious episode, but the clock went on
working...
After our adventure on the belfry we did not fly for a long time
because of the rains. First came warm showers, which caused steam to rise
from the cobblestones and made splashes like glass crowns as they danced
on the puddles. Then the rain began pouring steadily down, the puddles
grew darker, and little bubbles began floating to the surface like tiny
electric light bulbs. This meant we were in for a long spell of rain.
We were never bored, though, because we used to set out our cardboard
armies and organise battles which, even through the carpet, made the
trimmings on Auntie Valya's chandelier jingle wildly.
Breezy and Vetka used to run in, wet and cheerful, and join in our
battles.
Then Breezy brought "The Three Musketeers" over. It was a new copy
and its covers decorated with dark crossed swords creaked slightly and
smelt of glue and calico. And such wonderful adventures were inside it
that we could not put it down for hours on end. We used to sit in a
circle on the carpet like nomads round a camp-fire and take turns reading
it aloud, and then everything else in the world ceased to exist. One day
after such a reading session I tried to get up too quickly and crashed to
the floor because my legs had gone to sleep without me realising it.
In the evenings Vitalka worked on his pictures from the musketeers'
life, depicting dark houses with little yellow windows, a large moon, a
hunch-backed bridge and riders in hats and feathers, streaming in the
wind. Vitalka's horses were not very good and looked more like large
dogs but everything else he drew beautifully.
And I planed some thin musketeer swords and made guards out of tin
cans.
All this time the magic carpet dozed on the floor between our beds
just like any ordinary carpet.
Towards the middle of August the rains stopped and it became sunny
and windy again but not as warm as before. Small dark clouds with fluffy
golden edges came scudding from the north, and although beautiful, such a
cold sky was not tempting to fly in.
It was only at the very end of the month that summer returned
bringing serene warm days, fluffy seeds and cobwebs floating through the
air and the heady perfumes of overripe grass. The school term was
approaching fast.
On the thirty-first of August we were summoned to a school meeting
and lined up in classes in the yard. Then our head-teacher, Vera
Severyanovna, made a speech from the porch, and told us that we must work
particularly well that coming year. She said it at the beginning of every
school year. Nobody could explain why she called every new school year
special and why we were supposed to have done worse last year than we
would in the next. However, nobody ever asked Vera Severyanovna that
because they did not dare to.
You could not say she was very sharp-tempered, it was just that she
always seemed dissatisfied. Large and heavily-built with very light hair
namely (but not grey) and a fluffy scarf on her shoulders, she paced the
corridors like a large snowman, catching culprits. In her opinion, if a
person had not done anything naughty yet, he was bound to sooner or later
and the same applied if he had not yet received a bad mark. She made the
culprits stand by a wall all through break and took the "worst offenders"
off to her office where she scolded them in a monotonous tone and
summoned their parents.
To make up for it, we were very lucky with our teachers. My teacher
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