قراءة كتاب Bob Strong's Holidays Adrift in the Channel
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be.”
“But you could eat a sandwich, perhaps?” said she, opening a parcel which their mother had put up for the refreshment of Bob and herself during their journey. “Don’t you think you could?”
Dick’s eyes glistened.
“I’ll try, miss,” said he, trying to speak calmly; although they could see that he was really almost ravenous at the sight of the food. “I thinks as how I could eat a mou’ful.”
“Give him the lot, poor chap,” cried the old Captain; but Nellie did not need this admonition, being in the very act of handing over the parcel of sandwiches to Dick even while the old sailor spoke. “There’s no good in his making two bites of a cherry, as the saying goes.”
“Eat these, my poor boy,” cried Nellie. “Bob and I had buns at Waterloo before the train started, and we shan’t want anything till we get to auntie’s house.”
“Fire away, old chap!” chimed in Bob, noticing that the lad hesitated a moment in accepting the proffered gift. “You needn’t be afraid. Nellie and I are not hungry like you.”
Bob’s friendly tone, coupled with the sight of the tempting viands, at once removed any of Dick’s lingering scruples; and, in another minute, he was gobbling up the sandwiches like a famished wolf—his fellow-travellers looking on with the utmost complacency and satisfaction at the rapidity with which he got rid of them, bolting the little squares of bread and meat one by one.
All this time, the engine was puffing and snorting away as if it had a bad attack of asthma, giving a fierce pull every now and then to the dragging carriages behind it; while, when the stalwart iron horse occasionally loitered in his paces or slackened speed in going round a sharp curve on the line, the coupling-chains would rattle as they lost their tension and the buffers of the carriages behind, going faster for the moment than the engine, would come together with a bang that vibrated through the marrow-bones of all!
The scenery altered, too, every instant along the route; the wooded heights around Guildford and Godalming and Haslemere, which the poet Tennyson loved and where he lived and died, being succeeded by a stretch of level landscape, and this again by the steep bare hills encircling sleepy Petersfield.
Presently, a range of downs came in sight, curving away in horse-shoe fashion from right to left, on which were a series of red-brick, detached structures, placed along the topmost ridge at equal intervals apparently, until they were lost in the distance.
As they approached these nearer, Miss Nellie’s sharp eyes noticed that on the landward side these brick piles were covered with a slant of smoothly-shaven green turf that contrasted conspicuously with the chalky surface of the sloping ridge.
“What funny things those are!” said she, pointing these out to Bob. “Are they houses, or tombs, or what?”
“Where, what do you mean?” asked the Captain, turning round from his contemplation of Dick, who, having finished the packet of sandwiches, was now carefully searching the piece of newspaper in which they had been wrapped up on the chance of there being a few stray crumbs left. “Why, hullo, here we are close to our destination! Those ‘funny things,’ as you style them, missy, are the Portsdown forts—you are not far out though, in your estimate of their appearance, for they’re called ‘Palmerston’s Follies’ by the political wags here.”
“Are we near Portsmouth then?” said Nellie, peering out anxiously. “I don’t see anything!”
“Oh yes, missy, quite near,” replied the Captain, also looking out of the window. “There’s Havant just in front. Don’t you smell the sea?”
“Yes, Captain, yes, I do! Yes, I do!” cried Bob and Nellie together, clapping their hands. “Isn’t it nice! Isn’t it jolly!”—Bob, it may be taken for granted, using the latter term of approbation; Nellie adding on her own private account another, “Ah, how nice!”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion,” said Captain Dresser dryly, his experiences of the fickle element not having, perhaps, always been pleasant ones; but, before he could explain this, the train, with a piercing shriek of warning from the steam-whistle of the engine, glided into the station.
“Hav-’nt! Hav-’nt!” shouted the porters with lungs of brass and voices of leather or gutta-percha. “Hav-’nt! Hav-’nt!”
“That’s just what this boy will say when the guard asks him presently for his ticket, or the money for his fare,” said the Captain, with his comical chuckle and merry twinkle of his bird-like eyes, pointing to Dick as the ticket-collector banged open the door of the carriage as if trying to wrench it off its hinges and held out his hand. “He haven’t got his ticket. Hav-n’t, you see, my dears! Ha—ha—ha!”
Chapter Three.
Rover distinguishes himself.
The ticket-collector appeared puzzled for the moment, especially on noticing a poor, ragged fellow like Dick travelling in a first-class compartment “in company with gentlefolks,” as he thought to himself; but, at the instant this reflection passed through his mind, he recognised the Captain as an old and regular passenger on the line, besides being one from whom he had received many a ‘tip,’ so he at once touched his cap, responding with a grin of sympathy to the Captain’s cheery laugh, as if he thoroughly entered into the joke.
“Oh, haven’t he, sir?” said he, the ungrammatical phrase dropping more naturally from his rustic tongue; “then he’ll have to get ’un sharp, or pay the fare, sir.”
“Never mind about that, my man, I’ll pay for his ticket, for he’s travelling with me,” replied the old sailor as he fumbled in his pockets, shoving his hand first in one and then in the other; producing, at last, a number of gold and silver coins, mixed up with coppers, a bunch of keys, a clasp-knife, and his snuff-box, which somehow or other he had put back in the wrong place. “How much is it?”
“Where from, sir?” inquired the man, reaching out his hand for Bob and Nellie’s tickets. “Far up the line, sir?”
“No, only from Guildford,” replied the Captain. “That’s only half-way from London; but there’s half-a-sovereign, and you may keep the change for yourself.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the collector, touching his cap again and taking the coin. He still lingered, however, as if wanting something more but hesitated to ask for it.
“Well?” ejaculated the Captain impatiently. “What is it, my man?”
“Your ticket, sir,” said the man deferentially. “You forgot to give it me, sir.”
“Zounds!” cried the other, blinking away furiously and moving his eyebrows up and down as he searched vainly in all his pockets, finally discovering that he held the missing ticket in his fist all the while! “I declare I forgot all about it. You see I was ready for you, though, eh?”
“All right, sir, good-day,” said the man, receiving the ticket and shutting the carriage-door gently, with a bow and a smile and another touch of his cap; and, the next moment, with another sharp unearthly shriek of the steam-whistle similar to that which had heralded its entrance into Havant station, the train, giving a joggle and a jerk as it got under way, was speeding along again, across the rattling bridges that spanned the moats of the fortifications and through the Portsea lines, to the terminus beyond at Landport.
“Here we are, children,” exclaimed the Captain, on its pulling up at the journey’s end. “Here we are at last!”
“And is this Portsmouth?” inquired Nellie. But, she need not have asked the question; for, as she looked down the platform she cried out excitedly in the same breath—“Why, there’s aunt Polly! There’s aunt Polly!”
“Let me look, let me look,” said Bob, trying