The Little Captain Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  The Little Captain

  The Boat

  The Great Wave

  Popinjay Port

  The Dragon Gates

  The Island of Evertaller

  The Giant

  The Rescue

  The Mysterious Island

  Pirates?

  Trapped

  The Lion-Tamer

  Where Are the Lost Sailors?

  The Castaway

  The Mountain of Fire

  Hail and Farewell

  The Misty City

  Prisoners

  Timid Thomas

  The Secret of the Rainbow Woman

  The Thirteen Candlesticks

  Colour

  Beautiful Galatea

  Goodbye for Now

  The Little Captain and the Seven Towers

  The Storm

  The Whirlpool

  Down the Drain

  Father Bluecrab’s Garden

  In the Shell Palace

  Deaf Ears

  Flight

  Mr Fludde

  Up the Spout

  The Lighthouse

  The Spiral Staircase

  The Land of Nonsense and Knowledge

  Gold-Beating

  More Hard Labours

  The Diamond of Bright Thoughts

  The Seventh Tower

  The Enchanted Ship

  The Sad Tale of Crooked Ben

  Tangleroot Island

  The Treasure

  The Attack

  Poor Thomas

  Journey’s End

  The Little Captain and the Pirate Treasure

  The Pirate Treasure

  On the Way

  Brave Marinka

  Fear and Terror?

  The Copper Cannon

  The First Chest

  The Ship of the Desert

  Mirage

  Timid Thomas’s Trail

  What the Robbers Forgot

  A Mirror in the Sky

  Three More Chests

  Westward Ho!

  Where Is the Little Captain?

  The Boiling Sea

  The Storm

  The Floating Town

  Five Captains

  The Old Watchman

  Northern Lights

  The Signal Rocket

  The Lucky Chest

  A Party in the Citadel

  Also Available from Pushkin Children’s

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THE LITTLE CAPTAIN

  The Boat

  The Little Captain lived on top of the dunes. Not in a house, not in a hut, but in a boat.

  A raging storm which had blown the waves as high as skyscrapers had dashed the boat onto the dunes. And there she lay, stuck fast. Who had sailed in her no one knew. Only a boy had crawled up out of the cabin, a small boy wearing a big cap.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the people from the harbour.

  ‘The captain,’ said the boy.

  ‘Well, Little Captain,’ said the old salt from the harbour, ‘where do you come from?’

  ‘From my boat,’ replied the Little Captain.

  ‘And where does your boat come from?’

  But the Little Captain shrugged his shoulders and skipped back into his cabin.

  He had lived there ever since.

  When the sun shone he sat on the afterdeck and baked himself brown. When the moon shone he sat on the foredeck, playing his little brass trumpet.

  Down in the harbour the people listened.

  Ta-ran-ta-ra!

  ‘It makes you go all soft inside,’ the people said.

  But the old salt thought it was beautiful.

  Nobody knew where Salty had come from. If anyone asked him, ‘from a shipwreck’ was all he would reply.

  One day he climbed the steep, sandy path to the top of the dunes to see the Little Captain.

  ‘Would you like to come and live with us,’ Salty asked.

  The little boy shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I want to stay on my boat.’

  ‘But it’s a wreck.’

  ‘I’m going to mend it,’ said the Little Captain.

  ‘And how will you get it back to sea again?’ the old man inquired.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said the little boy. ‘I’ll wait for the next storm. And a wave. A back-to-front wave that will sweep my boat out to sea again.’

  ‘I see,’ said Salty, puffing on his pipe. ‘And where will you sail?’

  ‘To the island of Evertaller.’

  ‘And what will you see there?’

  ‘I don’t know, whispered the little boy, ‘but if only you can sleep there for one night, you will be a grown man when you wake up next morning.’

  ‘Really?’ Salty said. ‘Are you sure?’

  The Little Captain nodded. ‘Yes, it takes so long to grow up here.’

  ‘A very long time indeed,’ the old man agreed. ‘But do you know how to find this island of Evertaller?’

  ‘No,’ replied the Little Captain. ‘I am searching for it. But first I will mend my boat.’

  The old salt went home and the boy went down to the cabin to get his cart. It was made from an old chest with wheels underneath, but it ran rather crooked because one pair of wheels came from a bicycle and the other from a barrel-organ. It squeaked as the boy trundled it along, and when he passed through the streets of the little harbour town the people said: ‘There goes the Little Captain.’ They did not need to look; they could hear him.

  The Little Captain piled everything he could find on the streets into his cart. A piece of stovepipe, a bit of rope, a baby’s potty, some wire, a chair leg, a bicycle chain, a crooked nail, a length of tubing, a ball of wool, a broken mirror, a coin, an old shoe, a plank with two screws in it and a bit of fish-net.

  And when one day he found a whistling kettle and an old bathtub he had all that he needed to build a new engine. He began to hammer and saw and beat and plane and he stuck his tongue out to help him as he worked. This engine had to be stronger than the storm waves.

  But there were other children living in the small harbour town and, when they heard from the old salt about the island which the Little Captain meant to find, they all rushed up to the dunes, clambered on the deck of the boat and shouted: ‘Little Captain, we want to grow up in one night too. Can we come with you?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the Little Captain. ‘Just help me mend my boat.’

  So Dicky and Podgy Plum and Marinka and the others helped. They pushed the bathtub up on the afterdeck where the engine was to be and began to hammer and saw and screw under the Little Captain’s orders. The kettle here and the chair leg there, the bicycle chain up there, the pipe along there, and then the bathtub, upside-down, so that no steam could escape. In the end even Timid Thomas came and helped with the funnel, which was made of six buckets stuck one on top of the other.

  ‘Thank you all very much,’ said the Little Captain.

  ‘When do we sail?’ asked Podgy.

  ‘When the big wave comes,’ said the captain. ‘But first we have to make the propeller.’

  They were going to begin right away, but at that moment they heard voices in the dunes. The people from the town had missed their children, who should have been going to school.

  They advanced with great strides up the steep, sandy path, the teacher at their head. He was flourishing his stick angrily.

  The Great Wave

  The fathers and mothers came panting up the steep path after the master. When they reached the Little Captain’s boat at the top, they began to shout: ‘Hey, Dicky! Hey, Marinka! Come here, you must go to school at once!’

  The teacher banged on the side of the boat with his stick.

  The children hung over the rail and called back: ‘We don’t have to go to school any more! We’re going to the island of Evertaller to learn everything in one night and then we will be grown-ups!’

  ‘I never heard such rubbish!’ cried the schoolmaster sternly. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘The Little Captain,’ said the children.

  ‘Ha!’ shouted the master, turning as red as a lobster. ‘And where is this island to be found?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ cried the children. ‘We are going to look for it.’

  ‘I’ll teach you to look for it!’ shouted the master. In one bound he was on deck, chasing the children off the boat with his stick. ‘I’ll teach you where to find the island of Evertaller!’ he cried. ‘Off to school with you!’

  It was a dismal procession, but Timid Thomas was not in it. He was quaking with fright, hidden away in the hold.

  The Little Captain leaned over the rail, staring after the children. He did not have to go to school; the master and the fathers and mothers could not tell him what to do. No one could tell the Little Captain what to do. He picked up his brass trumpet and began to play the song of the sea:

  ‘O sea, O sea,

  Set my little boat free!

  She lies all alone where the dunes are dry—

  Send us a wave as high as the sky.’

  After this song the Little Captain suddenly thought of the propeller he had to make. A bronze propeller, stronger than the waves. He took his cart and his brass trumpet and went down to the town. He laid his cap on the ground, put the trumpet to his lips and began to play.

  Ta-ran-ta-ra!

  The people came out and stayed to listen, because the Little Captain played so that the music went in at your ears and str
aight down to your heart. He didn’t play jazz and he didn’t play pop, but he played the song of the endless sea—of happy mermaids and mournful gulls. And in between the songs he would call from time to time: ‘A penny for the trumpeter!’

  After an hour his cap was full of pennies. He tipped them into his cart, moved a few streets farther on and began again, until his cart was brimming over with pennies.

  Then he pushed it carefully back to his boat.

  After school the children came back. The Little Captain said: ‘Go and find some drift-wood. We have to melt this heap over a hot fire.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the children.

  ‘To make a propeller,’ said the Little Captain.

  The boys and girls collected wood from the beach and the Little Captain threw the pennies into his iron saucepan. The fire blazed up and made the pan glow like the sun. Podgy Plum and the others danced round it, but the Little Captain was digging in the sand. He was making the shape of a propeller which would be stronger than the waves and he beat the sand into shape with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Hurrah!’ cried the children when the money had melted and the red-hot bronze was bubbling. It sounded like Ta-ran-ta-ra!

  Then the Little Captain took seven oven-cloths, grasped the pan and poured the bronze into the hollow in the sand. It hissed and spluttered and the sparks flew. The children drew back, all but Timid Thomas who was still in the hold, peeping out through the hatch.

  Up came Salty. He spat on the bronze to see if it sizzled. ‘Still as hot as an iron,’ he said. But after an hour it had cooled down.

  They dug the bronze propeller out of the sand. The three blades glittered in the sun and the sailor tapped it with his pipe. ‘It sings like a mermaid,’ he said, and together they fixed the propeller to the boat. Then they brightened her name up with fresh paint: Neversink.

  ‘Perhaps you will bring them all back with you,’ said Salty.

  ‘Who?’ asked the Little Captain.

  But the old man turned away without answering and walked back to the harbour.

  Now the Little Captain’s ship was ready to sail. They were only waiting for the great wave, the back-to-front wave which was to pluck the ship from the dune top and sweep it out to sea.

  ‘Will you call us?’ asked the children.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Little Captain.

  But then the parents came back and dragged their children home: they were not allowed to sail away with the Little Captain. They were not allowed to sail to the island of Evertaller, because it did not exist, said their parents. The Little Captain leaned over the rail, staring after them.

  Then the wind began to blow. Harder and harder, so hard that the Little Captain began to stoke the fire under the steam kettle. The wind made the flames roar and the six-bucket funnel shuddered. In the middle of the night the waves flung themselves upon the dune top like baying hounds. ‘The big one’s coming,’ thought the Little Captain. He stood on the afterdeck blowing his trumpet to summon the other children. But the children were sleeping in their warm beds, dreaming that they were on the island already. All except Podgy and Marinka. They sprang to their feet and rushed out. Their night clothes fluttered in the gale and the spray spattered their faces. They ran to the top of the dune, barefoot in the wet sand.

  ‘We’re coming!’ they cried.

  But their voices were smothered by a deafening uproar. A giant breaker reared up, tall as a tower, and, just as Podgy and Marinka grasped the rail, the boat was caught up and swept out to sea.

  Out into the wild, desolate sea.

  Popinjay Port

  The waves were fiercer than wild beasts. They flung themselves on the boat and seemed to be roaring: ‘Neversink? We’ll get you!’ The Little Captain stood at the helm, sure and steady. His shoes might have been nailed to the deck. He said nothing, only steered. Podgy and Marinka were still hanging onto the rail, their night clothes fluttering like flags.

  ‘Landlubbers!’ shouted the Little Captain. ‘Stoke the fires, look lively!’ Then Podgy suddenly had to laugh. He brushed the sea-spray from his face and did not feel frightened any more. He and Marinka crawled to the afterdeck and together they heaped the black coals on the flames and poked the fire.

  Thick black clouds of smoke belched from the six-bucket funnel: the engine began to bellow louder than the storm and the propeller roared more savagely than the waves. So the ship with its three-child crew forged its way through the stormy seas to a region far beyond, where the sea was calm and the sun stood high in the sky.

  Then they heard a pounding on the hatch. A wailing voice issued from the hold: ‘I want to go home!’

  The Little Captain unscrewed the storm battens and opened the hatch. The small, white face of Timid Thomas came into view, peering anxiously about.

  ‘Oh, I do hope we won’t drown!’ he cried.

  The sea was so huge.

  ‘Of course we won’t,’ said the Little Captain.

  ‘How on earth did you get here, sailor hero?’ asked Podgy.

  But Marinka cried: ‘What does that matter? He’ll be useful to swab the decks.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Little Captain. ‘He is a stowaway. He can be our deck-hand.’

  ‘Can I come to the island with you?’ asked Timid Thomas. ‘Where you get big?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Podgy. ‘You’re not allowed to land. You must stay on board and mind the ship.’

  They sailed on for four days. Timid Thomas swabbed the decks, Podgy stoked the fire and Marinka baked pancakes. Sometimes one would fall in the sea, and then two codfish came and gobbled it up. But the Little Captain just stood at the helm, sure and steady, and steered with his eyes on the horizon.

  At night they slept in the cabin, side by side in hammocks, swinging gently to and fro. And if Thomas cried because he wanted to go home, Marinka muttered: ‘Quiet, cry-baby!’ but the Little Captain steered, his feet firmly planted on the deck, his eyes on the stars.

  On the fifth day Marinka climbed the mast (because Podgy was too fat and Thomas too frightened) and cried: ‘Land ahead!’

  ‘We’ll go there,’ said the Little Captain, and they sailed into Popinjay Port. Timid Thomas wanted to go ashore too and he followed the others, rolling like a real seaman.

  The people of Popinjay looked like a lot of parrots, because they loved to dress in red and green and yellow clothes.

  ‘How pretty,’ said Marinka.

  Then the Little Captain took his trumpet and began to play.

  Podgy went round with the cap and Marinka sang:

  ‘Popinjay parrots are happy and bright

  Oh, what a gaudy, glorious sight!

  Bright as a banner and ever so jolly—

  Throw us a penny for Popinjay Polly.’

  The people clapped their hands and threw so many coins into the cap that Podgy was able to buy a green jacket and red trousers and Marinka a dress as beautiful as a butterfly. Timid Thomas got a cap with a long tassel and a bell on the end.

  ‘So that we can hear you if you run away,’ said Podgy.

  Then the Little Captain went into the big sailors’ home to ask the way to the island of Evertaller. He found five hulking sailors in bell-bottom trousers and they all laughed at him. The bellows of their laughter reached the top floor, where the old lighthouse-keeper sat. He came downstairs. He did not laugh about the island of Evertaller, but took the Little Captain up with him and pointed across the wide sea.

  ‘Yonder,’ said he, ‘where my light shines at night, three days off, is the stone dragon gate. If you were to pass through it you would come to the island. But put about at once, because you cannot pass.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked the Little Captain.

  ‘The dragon gate is only made of stone at night,’ said the lighthouse-keeper. ‘But then it is so dark that you will run onto a rock.’

  ‘And by day?’ asked the Little Captain.

  ‘By day,’ said the lighthouse-keeper, ‘by day you cannot pass.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked the Little Captain again.

  ‘By day the gate is not made of stone.’

  ‘Oh?’ said the Little Captain. ‘What is it made of, then? Dragons?’ But the lighthouse-keeper turned away and gave no answer.

  ‘Go back,’ was all he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Little Captain and he went down to where the others stood waiting.