Coot Club

by Arthur Ransome

  “They’ll be pitching the mud-weight over,” said Tom to himself. “They’ll be all right, anchoring where they are.” He never guessed for a moment that this was the one thing they had not thought of doing.

  His first idea was to do the same for the Titmouse. These sudden fog banks that on a day of easterly wind sometimes sweep up from the sea over the lower reaches of the tidal rivers seldom last long. He had only to take the Titmouse to the side of the channel, anchor her and wait till the fog rolled away. He could see nothing, but, at the moment, he knew where he was, and feeling the cold wind on his right cheek-bone he kept the Titmouse close-hauled, until the black tarred piling by Reedham marshes loomed suddenly close ahead. He headed into the wind and lowered his sail. The black piling, dim in the fog, was sweeping by as he drifted down with the tide. He would anchor, light his oil-stove in the bottom of the boat, and do a little cooking.

  He was just going to throw his mud-weight over, a lump of iron, painted green to keep the Titmouse clear of rust, when his own hunger reminded him of the Teasel’s empty larder. It was all very well for him to sit comfortably in the Titmouse and make himself a pot of tea and boil an egg or two, but the crew of the Teasel, anchored away in the middle of Breydon, with nothing to do, would have to go on starving until the fog had passed.

  Standing in the drifting Titmouse, looking into pale fog and at the ghostly piling at the edge of the marshes, Tom changed his mind. Somehow or other he had to bring food and water to the Teasel. Could it be done? Why not? The Teasel, he had seen, was on the northern side of the deep-water channel down Breydon. He, too, drifting past the piling, was on the northern side of the channel. If he could manage to keep close along that side of the channel as he drifted down, the tide itself would take him within hailing distance of the Teasel. Suddenly the piling ended. He was out on Breydon now, with nothing to look for but the big black beacon posts which seemed near enough together in clear weather but ever so far apart in a fog. Yes, only the posts to look for above water, but what he had to follow was the bottom, where the shallow Breydon mudflats drop steeply into the deep dredged channel. He pulled up his centreboard. Titmouse with centre-board down was no joke to row. What was that? A huge black post loomed suddenly beside him, and was gone. Phew! Wouldn’t have done to go bumping into that. He got out his oars, and spun the Titmouse round, and began paddling her stern first, the better to keep a look out for the next post.

  But the next post seemed long in coming. Tom paddled harder. Then he stopped paddling altogether, and did a little thinking. He prodded down over the side with an oar, and could not touch the bottom. His mud-weight had only a short rope, but was longer than the oar. He lowered it over the side, using it as a sounding lead. It touched nothing. He must be well out in the dredged channel. He could see nothing but fog and a yard or two of brown water all round the boat. But all that water, though it looked still, was sweeping down to the sea, with the Titmouse upon it. Which way? Unless he could see something, or touch the bottom, he could not tell. The cold wind gave him some idea of the direction in which he was moving. But the wind might have changed. Tom looked blindly round him in the fog.

  Suddenly he jumped to his feet. What an idiot not to remember his compass. He opened the after locker of the Titmouse where the compass lived in a little box of its own, hooked under the stern-sheets so that it could not get thrown about. Uncle Frank had laughed at him for taking a compass with him when sailing in the Bure. It was going to be useful now. As a general rule a compass is not much use for navigation unless you have a chart. But Tom’s trouble was a simple one. All he wanted to do was to get back to the north side of the channel. The compass would make that easy enough. He laid it carefully on the floor of the Titmouse, in front of the water-jar, which, now that he was no longer sailing was standing in the stern. North? What? Over there? He paddled the Titmouse stern first, due north as the compass showed him. Good. There was another of those posts, dim in the fog, with the water swirling round it.

  He found bottom with his mudweight. The Titmouse swung round, giving him, roughly, the direction of the tide. He hauled up the weight again and paddled on. Every now and then he saw the ghost of a beacon. Every now and then he dipped over the side with an oar, and, sounding and paddling, with the tide to help him made his way along the edge of the channel. He grew a little over confident, and paddled for a long time without sounding at all. Then, when he sounded, he found deep water again. He paddled northwards. Another of those posts showed for a moment and was gone. Worse than blind man’s buff, thought Tom. How far had he come by now? The Teasel could not be very far away. No harm in hailing. He rested on his oars, drifting silently and listening. Gulls chattering. Foghorn. A steamer’s siren. He gathered his breath and shouted, “Teasel! Ahoy … oy!”

  There was no answer. Probably the fog made it hard to hear. He hailed again, “Teasel! Ahoy … oy … oy!”

  That did sound almost like an answering hail, faint, far away. He glanced at the compass. Yes. East-north-east. Tom paddled away, straining his eyes into the fog and listening. He was almost sure he had heard them.

  He hailed again, and listened.

  “Ahoy.… Ahoy.… Ahoy!”

  There they were. No doubt about it. But still far away.

  He paddled on.

  Suddenly he heard the barking of a dog. He pulled his oars in and stood up, letting the Titmouse drift.

  “Teasel! Ahoy … oy!”

  The barking broke out again, and a chorus of shouts. There they were. He had done it. Come down Breydon in a fog and found them. No need to worry about compass now, or mud-weight. They would be anchored at the side of the channel, and he had only to join them.

  “Ahoy!” he shouted, settling to his oars, spinning the Titmouse round and heading directly towards William’s welcome barking.

  “Titmouse, ahoy!” That was Dorothea. Too shrill for either of the twins.

  “All together,” he heard Starboard’s voice. And then there was a really splendid yell from the whole of the Teasel’s crew, “Titmouse! Ahoy!”

  Tom rowed as if in a race, quick strokes and as hard as he could, fairly lifting the Titmouse along. “Good old William,” he said to himself. William seemed almost to have guessed how useful it would be, and kept up excited barking all the time.

  “Ahoy!” panted Tom, and the next moment his oars were scraping on mud, the Titmouse had come to a standstill, and he had tumbled backwards almost as if he had caught one of Dorothea’s “lobsters”.

  He was up in an instant and frantically digging at the mud with an oar. The oar sank in as he pushed. He felt the Titmouse stir beneath him, and then settle again as he pulled to get the oar unstuck.

  And then, too late, the fog began to clear. Twenty yards away over the wet grey mud, he saw a ghostly Teasel heeled over on her side, with her ghostly crew crowded together in her well. The Titmouse, drawing only her inch or two, was stuck fast. The muddy water was already creeping away from her.

  “I say,” he gasped. “I’m aground.”

  “So are we,” said Starboard.

  “And some of us are very hungry,” said the Admiral.

  “I’ve got the water,” said Tom, “and the eggs and the milk, and they gave me two loaves of bread.”

  And then, prodding into the mud with his oar, he realised that with only twenty yards of it between them, the Titmouse and the Teasel, until the tide rose once more, might just as well be twenty miles apart.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  WILLIAM’S HEROIC MOMENT

  “IDIOTS we are, idiots,” said Starboard. “We ought to have shouted to him to keep away.”

  But, at such times as these, no one can think of everything. There had been a desperate struggle to get the Teasel afloat, which, of course, had failed. Then everybody had been wondering what would Tom be thinking when he found that they were not tied up at the pilot’s moorings in the Waveney. That first distant call out of the fog had told them that Tom had come down Breydon to l
ook for them, and they had thought of nothing but of letting him know where they were.

  And now there was Tom aground as firmly as themselves. And though they had forgotten their hunger for a time, they could not forget it now that bread and eggs and milk and water for making tea had come so near and yet were out of reach.

  The fog was still thick. But it had cleared enough to let them see what had happened. From the stern of the Teasel, a little creek ran across the mud to drain into the channel not far from one of the beacon posts, probably the very post they had sailed round while trying to keep it in sight. The Teasel had sailed thirty or forty yards up this creek before taking the mud at one side of it. The Titmouse had headed towards her out of the channel about midway between that beacon and the next, so Tom had seen neither. He had grounded on the ridge of mud between the Teasel’s creek and the main channel. They could see him rocking the Titmouse on the mud. If only he could get afloat he could come much closer to the Teasel by rowing round and up the creek in which there seemed still to be a little water. But he could not stir her. Already mud was showing all round her, and they could see the tide slipping away from her towards the beacons that marked the channel.

  “Can’t shift her,” he shouted to them.

  “We’re done until the tide comes up again,” said Starboard.

  “I say,” said Tom. “We shan’t be able to get down to Yarmouth even then. Wind and tide’ll both be against us. It comes up at a terrific pace.”

  “If only we’d stopped at Reedham we could have telephoned for the Come Along to meet us,” said Mrs. Barrable. “But it’s no good saying that. And it’s my fault. Disobeying the skipper. If we’d gone straight to the pilot’s, everything would have been perfectly easy. No, William, it’s no good asking. There simply isn’t any food. Not even for you.”

  “I’d better try to get across the mud with some of the grub,” called Tom.

  “No,” said the Admiral. “You’re not to try.… If you did sink in we couldn’t do a thing to save you.… And we wouldn’t be any nearer having anything to eat.”

  “You couldn’t chuck a rope?” shouted Tom.

  “Too far.”

  “I daren’t try to buzz a loaf.”

  “What about mud shoes?” suggested Port. “Fastening boards under our feet, and waddling across like ducks.”

  “No tools,” said Mrs. Barrable.

  “And no boards,” said Starboard, “unless, we pull the Teasel to bits.”

  “Is the tow-rope long enough?” asked Dick. “The big coil in the forepeak. The one we used at Yarmouth.”

  “It’s long enough,” said Starboard, “or jolly nearly. But we can’t get it across.”

  “There is one way we could do it,” said Dick. “If William helped. But he wouldn’t like it. And I don’t suppose you’d let him, really.”

  “William?”

  And then Dick explained his idea, and, as they listened, even the twins cheered up a little, wretched though they were at having to wait on the mud. Would it work, or wouldn’t it?

  “Of course he doesn’t weigh much, and if only he keeps going pretty fast.”

  “He’d feel the string pulling him back.”

  “It needn’t be string. It doesn’t matter how light the first thing is. We could start with cotton, and then string. There’s a huge ball of string in the stores.”

  “I’ve got a reel of cotton,” said Dorothea. “Mother put in it, in case buttons came off Dick.”

  “And if it unrolls on one of the Admiral’s pencils,” said Dick, “William wouldn’t feel it at all. Is the hole through the middle big enough?”

  Dorothea slipped into the cabin sideways and worked herself along it to get at her little suitcase. The cabin was on such a slant that walking through it was impossible.

  “Poor old William,” she said, looking at him. Disliking the fog, he had made himself comfortable on the lee bunk.

  “Get his harness,” said the Admiral. “In the cupboard under the looking-glass.”

  Good! The Admiral must really be going to let him try. It was in moments like these that Dick had his best ideas, and Dorothea did not feel that the twins half understood how useful he could be.

  The Admiral poked a pencil through the cotton reel, and made the reel spin by patting it.

  “He’ll never feel the pull of that,” said Dick.

  “William,” said the Admiral, suddenly making up her mind.

  There was no answer.

  “William,” she said again, and leant down and put her head into the cabin.

  William snuggled down on the port bunk. The next moment he felt his mistress take a firm grip of the scruff of his neck. He was plucked forth, out of the cabin into the cold fog and dumped in the well, which, like the cabin, seemed to have taken a permanent slant. William made a half-hearted attempt to get back into the cabin, but found people’s legs in the way. And after all it was his mistress who had plucked him out. He pretended he had meant to come, and, slithering on the bottom of the floor of the well, scrambled up on the port seat, and, with his paws on the coaming, looked out into the fog and down at grey-green mud with trickles of water winding across it.

  Mrs. Barrable was putting his harness on him.

  “What about it, William?” she said.

  William looked up at her with a hint of doubt in his goggling black eyes. His green leather harness with the silver bells on it usually annoyed him, but he knew that he never had to wear it unless out walking in a town, or in someone else’s garden. Anyhow, on dry land that knew its place and did not tip up sideways like this horrid boat. He decided that harness meant going back to sweet-shops and civilisation. For once he made no difficulty about having it put on.

  “Hullo, William,” called Tom, and William barked back.

  “He’ll do it,” said Dorothea. “He always does do what Tom tells him.”

  “Have you got the cotton ready?” said the Admiral over her shoulder.

  “Here’s the end of it,” said Dick. “I’m going to hold the pencil at each end so that the reel won’t slip off. If only he’ll go …”

  “Now, William,” said the Admiral, tying the end of the cotton to the ring in the harness to which the leather lead was clipped. “This is your moment. It comes to everybody, just once, the moment when he has to be a hero or not think much of himself for the rest of his life. Are you ready, Dick? Luckily it’s good stout cotton.… Good little dog. Clean, tidy little dog.… Never gets his feet muddy.…”

  “You be ready to call him, Tom,” shouted Starboard.

  “Call who?” said Tom, his voice coming queerly from the shadowy little boat away over the mud. Tom had been busy stowing his sail. It would be needed no longer, and he was making a neat job of it.

  “William,” called Dorothea. “He’s bringing a cotton across.”

  “A life-line,” called Port. “He’s a pug-rocket.”

  And then, suddenly, William’s own mistress lifted him up and lowered him over the side of the Teasel down to the Breydon mud, keeping firm hold of his lead for fear the mud should be too soft even for pugs. The next moment she was wiping the mud from her eyes. William made a desperate, splashing effort to get back aboard the Teasel. But he could get no hold for his fore-paws. In half a minute he was more like a little grey, muddy hippopotamus than a dignified and self-respecting pug.

  “Quick,” said the Admiral, reaching down again to unclip the lead from the harness. “The mud’ll bear him.” William was free on the mud, held by nothing but the thread of cotton.

  “Now!” everybody shouted at once. “Call him, Tom. Call him.”

  “Good boy,” called Tom. “Come on, William! William! Come on, boy! Come on! Chocolate, William.…”

  “Is there any chocolate?” asked Dorothea.

  “There’s a scrap in his box,” said Dick. “I left a bit when I gave him his breakfast.”

  “Go on, William,” said the Admiral. “I can’t help it. You’ve just got to be a hero. G
o on! Go to Tom!”

  “William!” Tom’s voice came again. “Good old William!”

  William stopped struggling to get back aboard the Teasel. He looked over his shoulder. Never in all his life had he been so badly treated. Dumped into sticky grey mud. Green slime, too. And after all this talk about wiping paws on the mat. William barked. His bulging black eyes looked as puzzled as he felt.

  “We’ll have to let him come back,” said Starboard.

  “Don’t be a donkey, Starboard,” said the Admiral, though tears were in her own eyes as she looked down at the unhappy, muddy little dog.

  “Come along, William!”

  “He’s going,” said Port.

  William set out towards the Titmouse and his friend. He stopped and turned back.

  “Don’t let him get the cotton round his legs,” said Dick.

  “Go away, William. Get out, we don’t want you. Go to Tom! Tom! Go to Tom! Fetch him!”

  William gave a last disgusted look at the crew of the Teasel and waddled off across the mud.

  “The reel’s unrolling perfectly,” said Dick.

  The others watched it spinning on the pencil that he held by both ends.

  “It’s stopped. Tom! Tom! Do make him go on!”

  But William had hesitated only for a moment. He had gone more than half-way. The reel spun once more as the cotton unrolled.

  “He’s got there.”

  “Tom’s yanked him aboard.”

  Tom’s voice suddenly changed its tone. He had been calling to William, begging him to come on, but now in the Titmouse William was shaking himself, and Tom was doing his best to save his sail. “Shut up, William! Keep still! I’ll wipe it off for you! Do keep still.”