Coot Club

by Arthur Ransome

  “All right,” said Starboard. “Better learn. Don’t look at anything except the Titmouse. Keep the Teasel pointing at her all the time.”

  Above the railway bridge they stopped only to raise the mast and set the sails. Tom would not wait for lunch.

  “Let’s get away from this place,” he said. “Can’t we have it on the way?”

  They sailed on. The sun still shone, and the wind blew, the very best of winds for working through the long dyke into Horsey Mere. But, for Tom, life had somehow gone out of the day. If George Owdon had seen him with the Teasel, and told the Hullabaloos, the worst might happen almost any time. Who could tell where those beasts were or how fast they could get about? Lemonade and cheese sandwiches and Potter Heigham buns did not cheer him.

  But, of the others, Dorothea alone was sure she had seen George Owdon by the bridge. They grew more and more cheerful as they left the bungalows astern, and turned through the narrow Kendal Dyke into a lovely wilderness of reeds and water, sailed from one to another of the posts that mark the channel, came to a signpost standing not on land but out in the middle of the Sounds, read “To Horsey” on one side of it, reached away through Meadow Dyke, so narrow that they could easily have jumped ashore, and came at last into the open Mere.

  This way and that they sailed about the Mere, and, at last, followed another sailing yacht into the little winding dyke, with a windmill at the end of it, just as the map had showed. Here they tied up the Teasel and made her ready for the night. Then, while the Admiral settled down to paint a picture, the others crowded into Titmouse, and went off to row round the reed-beds and see how many new birds they could find for Dick to put down in his notebook. Dick covered two pages with “Birds seen at Horsey,” and began a third. Close by the entrance to Meadow Dyke they found him his first reed pheasants, and, at dusk, as they were rowing back to the Teasel he saw his first bittern, unless Tom was mistaken when he pointed it out, just dipping into the shadowy reeds.

  After a latish supper Tom and Dick went off to the Titmouse, to sleep one each side of the centre-board. The others settled down in the Teasel.

  “You comfortable?” said Tom when lights were out.

  “Very,” said Dick.

  “Bet you aren’t,” said Tom. “It’s just that one bone that’s always a bother. Work round till that one’s comfortable and you’ll find nothing else matters.”

  But for a long time after lights were out, people were awake in both boats, listening to at least three bitterns booming at each other, and the chattering of the warblers in the reed-beds, the startling honks of the coots, and the plops of diving water-rats.

  It was very late when the Admiral, listening to the steady breathing of the twins in the fore-cabin, leant across to Dorothea. “Why are you not asleep?” she whispered.

  “Supposing that boy was George Owdon,” whispered Dorothea. “Supposing the Hullabaloos came and found us.”

  “It’s all right, Dot. You needn’t worry. An Admiral’s boat is her castle, and they’d have to sink us before we’d give him up.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  NEIGHBOURS AT POTTER HEIGHAM

  A NIGHT’S sleep seemed to have sponged the Hullabaloos from everybody’s mind. Even Dorothea was thinking less of the dangers threatening the outlaw than of the coming voyage of the exiled Admiral home to her native Beccles. Today and tomorrow with the twins to help, and then she and Dick would have to take their places. The Teasel that morning was a training ship and nothing else. Sails were set and furled three times over, just for practice. And then, hour after hour, the Teasel flew to and fro on Horsey Mere, beating, running, reaching, jibing, one thing after another, with the apprentices taking turns at tiller and mainsheet, each with a lecturing skipper.

  Everything went extremely well, and when they tied up in the mouth of Meadow Dyke for their mid-day meal, the Admiral left Dorothea in charge of the cooking, and settled down in the cabin to write a rather boastful letter to her brother.

  “Yes,” she wrote. “You may well look at the postmark. Too late to stop us. I am leaving this to be posted after we have left for the horrors of Yarmouth. So the best you can do is to wish us a good voyage. The doctor’s son is an excellent skipper, and if you could see the hard work that is being done in turning my visitors into tarry seamen, you would know you had nothing to worry about.” Here was a picture of her brother the painter frantically tearing his hair. “The whole lot of them are far better sailors than you and I were when we were young.” Here was a picture of a small girl with frilled drawers showing beneath her longish petticoats, and a small boy with a very wide-brimmed sailor hat. “And if you could only see the three young pirates who hover round and make themselves useful, you would know why I wish the Teasel were a little bigger. Too, big for children to handle, you say? Brother Richard, I wish she were twice the size.”

  “Look here,” said Starboard when the washing up was over. “This wind is just right for getting through Meadow Dyke, and fine for the Thurne. We’ll only have to quant through Kendal Dyke. What about pushing on now, and sailing down to Thurne Mouth so as to be safe for getting home tomorrow?”

  “We ought to get home tomorrow before the A.P. comes back from Norwich,” said Port. “There may be lots of things to do getting ready for next day’s race. It would be awful if we got stuck with a calm and couldn’t get back to Horning at all.”

  “And we’d better be giving the apprentices some practice in ‘the rule of the road’. We can do that much better in the river.”

  “Let’s just get one more bird for the list,” said Dick.

  “No time for birds today,” said Starboard. “But we’ll take one more turn across the Mere if that’ll do.”

  They swept across the Mere to the far reed-beds, turned and were half-way back when, almost in a shout, Dick cried, “There’s our one more bird. Look! It’s a hawk. Yellow head …”

  “Marsh Harrier,” said Tom. “Jolly rare.”

  “There’s another,” said Dick. “Two of them.”

  One bird was high above the reeds. The other, the larger one, was rising towards it. Dick tried to see them with the glasses. “Better without,” he said. “They’re moving too quick. Not like stars. What’s that top one got in its claws?” The two birds were flying one above another and no longer so far apart. Suddenly the first hawk dropped or threw from it the small bird it was carrying. The other turned almost on its back in the air and caught the quarry as it fell.

  “Oh, well held, sir,” said Tom, as he would have said on seeing a good pass at a football match.

  “Why not ‘madam’?” said the Admiral.

  “It ought to be ‘madam’,” said Port. “It’s the cock bird feeding his Missis.”

  “She’s a jolly good catch,” said Tom.

  “My goodness, Dick,” said Starboard. “It’s a good thing you weren’t steering when you saw that.”

  But Dick did not hear her. He was already busy with his notebook.

  They sailed away now, straight through the long narrow dyke and back through Heigham Sounds. Here the wind headed them. The Sounds grew narrower and narrower. Port took the tiller from her apprentice, who was glad to give it up in this place where the Teasel had hardly left one side of the channel before she was already at the other.

  “We can’t tack through here,” said Tom. “We’ll have to quant.”

  “Do let me,” said Dick. He was still glowing from the excitement of seeing those hawks, but he had been wanting to quant ever since that day when he had seen Tom doing it while the Death and Glory was towing the Teasel into Ranworth Broad.

  “Do you think he can?” asked Tom.

  “Current’s with us, what there is of it,” said Starboard. “He’s only got to keep her moving. It’s a good chance to learn. Come on, Dick. I’ll give her a shove or two and then you be ready. Hi, you people, get the main-sheet hard in. We don’t want the boom swinging about.”

  Twice Starboard, standing by the shrouds, held the lo
ng quant upright, let it slip through her hands until it found the bottom, and then leaning on it walked aft along the side-deck, freed the quant from the mud with a sharp twist and jerk, and ran forward again.

  “Now then,” she said. “Ready to take it?”

  The quant was in Dick’s hands, and Starboard was out of the way, behind him, on the foredeck.

  “That’s right. Look out for fouling the shrouds. Let it go down.”

  Funny, thought Dick. No chance of being able to lean on the end of it. The thing was nearly upright.

  “Better next time.”

  “Keep her moving,” said Tom.

  Dick galloped unsteadily forward along the narrow deck. More of a slant. That would do it. Down went the quant. There was the mud. Now push. Push. He walked aft, pushing with all his force. The next time was easier, and the next.

  “She’s moving beautifully now,” Dorothea encouraged him, as he came aft a fourth time, leaning on the quant in the most professional manner.

  The longer the push the better she moved, thought Dick. He walked to the very end of the counter and turned to hurry forward again. But what was this? The quant would not stir. He pulled. The Teasel, still moving beautifully, was leaving the quant behind. Dick hung on, pulling desperately. The counter was going away from under him.

  “Grab him!” cried Tom, but it was too late.

  For one moment, Dick hung between the quant and the departing Teasel. The next he was struggling in the water.

  “Dick!” cried Dorothea, and the Admiral, hearing the splash, came hurrying out of the cabin.

  Tom was already casting off the Titmouse.

  “Don’t try to turn the Teasel,” he shouted. “Not room.”

  Bother those rowlocks. What a time it seemed to take to get them into their seatings. But it was only a second or two really before Tom was backing the Titmouse towards Dick who had, too late, let go of the quant, and was trying to swim and at the same time to do something with his spectacles.

  “They got off one ear,” he spluttered. “Luckily I didn’t lose them. I got my cap all right. I say, I’m awfully sorry. I don’t know how it got so stuck. Pouf. Pouf.” He spluttered out a lot of water, and grabbed hold of the Titmouse’s stern.

  “You all right?” asked Tom.

  “Yes,” said Dick.

  “Well, don’t waste time trying to come aboard. We’ve got to have that quant.”

  The quant was loose enough now, and Tom freed it with a single tug, while Dick, blinking through his wet spectacles, trod water and held on by the transom.

  “Quant’s too long,” said Tom. “We’ll have to tow it. Can you just hang on with one hand and hang on to the quant with the other, till we can let them have it again? They’ll be in a mess if we can’t let them have it quick.”

  The quant was back aboard the Teasel before the apprentice who had lost it. They were very glad to have it, for already the Teasel, helpless in the narrow channel, had drifted against the reeds and was held there between wind and current. The twins, Port at the tiller, and Starboard at the quant, had her going again before Dick had scrambled in over Titmouse’s stern. A moment later he was kneeling, dripping on the Teasel counter. He was astonished to find that everybody was very pleased with him.

  “Well done, Dick!” said Starboard.

  “Jolly good bit of work,” said Port.

  “But I tumbled in,” said Dick.

  “Everybody does that some time or other,” said Tom, making fast the Titmouse’s painter. “But you’ll make a sailor all right.”

  And then the Admiral, who had watched the rescue without a single word, let go Dorothea’s hand, remembered Dick’s mother, and made him take off his wet things.

  DICK OVERBOABD

  “Well,” she said. “It’s a good thing you’re not drowned, but I really don’t know how we’re going to get you dry.”

  “That’s easy,” said Port. “The boat-yards at Potter have got a hot room for airing mattresses and things. The people there’ll dry them for us. They’ll do it in no time.”

  “I’ve got a spare pair of bags,” said Dick.

  “I can lend him a jersey,” said Tom.

  “Oh,” said Dick.… “How awful. I’ve got my notebook wet, the outside of it … and some of the inside, too.”

  “But you ought to be pleased,” said Dorothea. “Think of explorers swimming tropical rivers. This notebook’ll be the best you’ve ever had.”

  “I bet Kendal Dyke wasn’t very tropical today,” said Tom with a grin.

  “Do the best you can, Dick,” said the Admiral.

  Dorothea was already in the cabin, digging out a vest and drawers for him. “You can wear your pyjamas over the top,” she said, “just till your things are dried.”

  They got through the dyke, Dick himself, in flannel shorts and a pyjama jacket over a jersey much too big for him, quanting the last few yards after Starboard had shown him the twist and jerk that frees a quant from all but the most obstinate mud. Once in the river they could sail again. They swept down to Potter Heigham, lowered the mast, quanted through the bridges and tied up.

  “We’ll have to wait till those things are dry,” said the Admiral. “We can’t dry them in the Teasel, and it’s no good starting on a voyage with wet clothes.”

  “We’re all right now,” said Starboard. “If there’s any wind at all we can get from Potter to Wroxham tomorrow, and if there’s a calm we can take a bus. It’s not like being miles away from anywhere like we were at Horsey.”

  The people at the boat-yards told the Admiral it was not the first time they had had clothes to dry for a quanter who had been pulled in by his quant. They said a few hours would do the trick, and if she would wait till evening, she could have them back as dry as a bone. So, thanks to Dick, the Teasel and the Titmouse settled down to spend the night at Potter Heigham.

  The Admiral painted a picture of the old bridge. The others took William for a walk, and, on their way back met a “Stop me and Buy one” ice-cream boy on his tricycle. They stopped him and bought seven, of which one was wasted because it was strawberry and William decided that he did not care for any but vanilla. The Admiral wanted to take them to have a hot meal at the inn, but the twins were longing to play with the Primuses and they and Dorothea had an orgy of cooking instead … steak and kidney pies, suet and ginger puddings, green peas, and mushroom soup, all out of tins but none the worse for that, and beautifully hotted up.

  But they were not allowed to forget the Hullabaloos altogether. Tom and Dorothea, as soon as they had tied up, had looked to see if George Owdon was among the idlers by the bridge. He was not, but, as time went on, they noticed that, though other people came and went, a small, tow-haired, scrubby little boy seemed unable to tear himself away.

  The funny thing was that he seemed to take no interest in sailing yachts. But every time a cruiser came to the staithe the small boy left the bridge and came strolling along the bank, whistling and looking in all directions except at the cruiser, until he was near enough to be able to read her name.

  “I wonder if that’s Bill’s friend,” said Dorothea. “He said he had one here, watching, and that boy was here yesterday when we went through.”

  “Soon find out,” said Starboard. “Hallo, you. Looking for someone?”

  “Only for a cruiser.… Leastways not exactly.…”

  “Margoletta?”

  The small boy goggled at her.

  “You lookin’ for her, too? Don’t say as I tell ye,” he whispered.

  “That’s all right,” said Starboard. “Your friend’s name is Bill.”

  The small boy came a little nearer and pulled one hand from his breeches pocket. Looking about him to see that no one was watching, he opened his fingers, and showed a folded bit of grubby paper in which could be seen the shape of something flat and round.

  “Telephone money,” he whispered darkly. “You got it too?” but sauntered off without waiting for an answer. Another cruiser was coming
up, and they saw that, as if by accident, the small boy was in the right place to meet her and ready to lend a hand with her warps. A minute or two later he was on his way back to the bridge.

  “That’s not her neither,” he said, as he passed close by the Teasel.

  “A much better sentinel than Joe’s stomachache boy down at Acle,” said the Admiral.

  Not until dusk did the small boy leave his post.

  “She won’t come now,” he said, as he passed them, pretending to look the other way, and presently disappeared behind the first of the bungalows, along the bank of the river.

  “Well,” said the Admiral, “that’s all right. Nothing to worry about until tomorrow. Here’s the man with Dick’s clothes. Very nice of him to take the trouble of getting them out for us so late. And now, to bed, everybody. Poor old William’s snoring already.”

  *

  It was perhaps an hour and a half after that, or even more, when Tom, in the bottom of the Titmouse, snug in his sleeping-bag, first heard the distant throbbing of a motor-boat.

  It was quite dark, long after the time at which all hired cruisers are supposed to be moored for the night. For a moment, Tom thought that worry about the Margoletta had made him dream of her. But there it was, a steady, thrumming noise, and it seemed to be coming nearer. Yes. There was no doubt about it. A motor-cruiser was coming up the river. Tom lay listening.

  “Tom!”

  That was Dick’s voice, very low, from the other side of the centre-board case.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you hear anything?”

  “Yes.”

  The noise was coming nearer and nearer.

  Dick whispered, “Is it them?”

  “It’s the noise they make.” Nobody could mistake that loud rhythmic thrumming.

  “No wireless this time.”

  “They oughtn’t to be moving after dark, anyway. That’s why they aren’t using it. Unless …”