The Big Six: A Novel

by Arthur Ransome

  “Good work,” said Tom.

  “Tiller, Pete,” said Joe. “Half ahead there, in the tug. Go steady.”

  The salvage tug moved slowly on towards the staithe, followed by the rescued yacht with Pete steering, while Joe coiled the mooring ropes at bow and stern, with anchors on the top of the coils, ready to take ashore.

  “Slow ahead,” he called as they swung round the bend under the inn.

  A window was suddenly flung up in the inn, and a maid leaned out of it, shaking a duster. Horning was waking up.

  “I’m casting off now,” called Joe. “Stand by to haul in the tow-rope. All gone!” He ran aft. “Now then, young Pete. You go forrard ready to hop ashore. I’ll bring her in.”

  The yacht slid slowly alongside the staithe. Tom and Bill were bringing the Death and Glory back to her old berth a few yards lower down. Pete and Joe hopped ashore from the yacht, each with an anchor and warp. They were just making her fast to the rings on the staithe when two larger boys, on bicycles, came round the corner of the boatshed, rode along the staithe, jumped off and stood watching them.

  “At it again,” said one of them. “Well. There are two witnesses this time. Now then. Just you leave those warps alone. Lucky we were passing. You leave those warps alone…. Casting boats off and then telling people you didn’t.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” said Pete. “So there. You can see we didn’t. We’re tying her up, not casting her off.”

  “Likely story. Why, we caught you at it, with the warps already loose. Come on, George, let’s go and report them to that policeman right away.”

  “When we get back from Norwich,” said George Owdon. “No time to waste now. Caught them in the act. And young Tom Dudgeon in it too.”

  Tom jumped furiously ashore.

  “We didn’t cast her off. We found her adrift, with her warps hanging loose. Her mast was caught in a tree. Look at the leaves on the deck. Anything might have happened if we hadn’t come along.”

  “Salvage job,” said Joe.

  “Casting off the Margoletta was salvage, too, I suppose,” said George Owdon. “You make those ropes fast again at once, and don’t think you can cast her off after we’ve gone. We’ve seen you at it.”

  “We’re making ’em fast anyway,” said Joe. “You see we was.”

  “We saw you with the warps loose, casting her off,” said George Owdon. “And I suppose you’ll say you had nothing to do with all the others. I suppose you’ll say you didn’t touch the Towzers’ rowing boat, or the green houseboat, or the Shooting Star?”

  “What?” exclaimed Tom. “Nobody’s gone and touched the Shooting Star?”

  “Haven’t they? You ought to know. I suppose she got away by herself, and the rowing boat, and the houseboat. Likely, isn’t it? And this time you’re caught with the warps in your hands. Come on, Ralph. You others’ll be hearing about this.”

  George Owdon and his friend mounted their bicycles and rode away.

  “Nasty beasts,” said Pete.

  “It doesn’t matter a bit,” said Tom. “We all know where we found her.”

  Bill was not so sure. “Who’s to prove it?” he said. “They all thought it was us with that cruiser yesterday and we know we never touch her.”

  “What about them other boats?” said Joe.

  “Harry Bangate knows we were with him all night,” said Tom. “We couldn’t be casting off boats and lifting eel pods at the same time.”

  “Lucky for us,” said Joe.

  They went back to the Death and Glory.

  “You take your pick of them eels,” said Joe.

  Tom took a couple out of the bucket. “These’ll do for me,” he said. “Are you going to do yours now?”

  “Going to have a sleep first,” said Joe. “Pete’s near yawning his head off again. Have to keep the fire going too, and who’s to stay awake to keep stoking.”

  “I’m off now,” said Tom. He too was yawning. “I’ll be back later, when I’ve had a bit of sleep. Where’s that oilskin?”

  He went off, with the oilskin bundled under one arm and an eel in each hand.

  “I’m going to sleep till next week,” said Pete.

  The milkboy rattled past the staithe on his tricycle. When he saw the Death and Glories he stared, hopped off, and wheeled his tricycle up to the boat.

  “Hullo,” he said. “Why ain’t you down at the Ferry?”

  “What for?” said Bill sleepily.

  “Salving boats. There’s half a dozen gone adrift and brought up there.”

  “We got to get some sleep,” said Joe.

  “Did you push ’em off?” said the milkboy.

  “No,” said Joe.

  “Some of ’em think you done it,” said the boy.

  “Let ’em think,” said Bill. “We been eeling all night along of old Harry Bangate at the eel setts.”

  “Get any?”

  “Lots.”

  “And you didn’t cast off no boats?”

  “Get out,” said Bill. “You leave us alone. We’re going to sleep.”

  “Can’t a chap ask a question?” said the milkboy and rode away on his tricycle.

  Bill went down into the cabin and came out again with a board on which he had pencilled in big letters, “ASLEEP. DON’T DISTURB”. “That’s what my Dad put up when my Mum was sick,” he said.

  “Fine,” said Joe.

  They fixed the board up on the roof of the cabin. Then, almost too sleepy to know what they were doing, they went below, kicked off their boots, turned in on their bunks without undressing, rolled to and fro to get their blankets round them, and began to make up for lost time.

  CHAPTER V

  DARKENING CLOUDS

  “ASLEEP. Don’t disturb.” Someone was reading Bill’s notice.

  “What cheek!” said someone else.

  “I’ll disturb ’em,” said a third voice.

  For some time Joe, Bill and Pete, lying on their bunks in the Death and Glory feeling better after a few hours’ sleep but in no hurry to get up, had heard people talking close by. Now a hearty bang on the roof of the cabin brought them to their feet. They came out into the cockpit to find the staithe crowded. The stranger whose boat they had rescued was looking at her mooring ropes and talking to George Owdon. The owner of the green houseboat was telling people how he had waked in the night to find himself drifting down the river. The two Towzer boys were telling how they had found their rowing skiff caught in the chains of the ferry. The owners of the Shooting Star were explaining that only luck had saved their little racing cutter from being wrecked against some piling, though they had tied her up themselves after sailing in her the day before. Mr. Tedder, the policeman, who had banged on the roof of the cabin, was looking at his note-book and sucking the end of his pencil. Everybody seemed to be talking at once but, as the Death and Glories came out into their cockpit, the angry chatter died to a sudden silence.

  “So you’re at it again,” said Mr. Tedder. “What are you doing it for? Up late last night you were. I see a light in your windows. And now this morning you were seen casting off that yacht….”

  “Tying it up,” said Joe.

  “Why did you want to send my houseboat adrift?”

  “What about our rowing boat?”

  “You might have done fifty pounds’ worth of damage sending Shooting Star down the river.”

  “We ain’t touched any of ’em,” said Joe. “Ask Tom Dudgeon.”

  “Tom Dudgeon,” somebody laughed. “‘Ask Tom Dudgeon’ they say. Why, it was Tom started this game.”

  “Where were you last night after twelve o’clock?” said Mr. Tedder. “Where were you? Casting off moorings and sending boats adrift all down the reach. That’s what you were doing.”

  “We wasn’t,” said Joe.

  “There’ll be no peace on the river till they’re off it,” said a voice.

  “What’s ado here?”

  “Dad,” called Pete, as his father pushed his way through the crowd
.

  Mr. Tedder turned round. “Your Pete’ll be in trouble over this,” he said. “And it’ll be you to pay the fine. Why don’t you look after him?”

  “What have you been up to, Pete?” said his father.

  “Nothing,” said Pete.

  “Haven’t they?” Again half a dozen people began talking at once.

  Pete’s father listened.

  “Shurrup,” he said suddenly. “Pete. You tell me. Have you touch any of them boats?”

  “No,” said Pete.

  “Hear that,” said Pete’s father.

  Mr. Tedder silenced everybody. “I’m making this inquiry,” he said. “Where was this boat last night after twelve o’clock?”

  “Up river,” said Joe.

  “Down river, you mean,” said somebody.

  “Up river,” said Joe.

  “What were you doing in her?”

  “We wasn’t in her.”

  “Ar.” Mr. Tedder wrote busily in his book.

  “They were ashore casting loose my houseboat.”

  Mr. Tedder waved his pencil to quiet the old man.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Catching eels.”

  “Eels! A likely story. Let’s see ’em.”

  Bill said not a word but held out the bucket. Mr. Tedder looked solemnly at the eels in the bottom of it.

  “We was with Harry Bangate at the eel sett,” said Joe.

  “I bet that’s a lie,” said George Owdon.

  “Soon settle that,” said Pete’s father. “Here’s old Harry now coming down the river.”

  The eelman was rowing steadily downstream. Everybody knew him, with his grey mane hanging over his shoulders from under his tattered black hat. They shouted. He looked round as if to see what they were shouting at, and rowed on silently till he brought his old boat in beside the stern of the Death and Glory.

  “Done with that bucket?” he said.

  Bill emptied eels, blood and slime from the eelman’s bucket into their own and began sluicing the borrowed bucket over the side.

  “Harry Bangate,” said Mr. Tedder. “These boys say they was with you at the eel sett last night.”

  “And so they was,” said the old man. “Eels run well, the warmints.”

  “How long was these boys with you?”

  “They come before turn of tide,” said the old man. “Twelve o’clock, likely, and they stay with me till daylight when the warmints stop running. Anything amiss?”

  “I tell you so,” said Pete’s father. “They never touch your boats.”

  People on the staithe looked almost disappointed. Bill gave his bucket back to the eelman, who put it in the bottom of his boat, stepped ashore, and stumped off towards the inn. Mr. Tedder shut up his note-book, and looked first at one and then at another.

  “Rum thing,” he said.

  “They managed it somehow,” said one of the boat owners. “There’s nobody else to do it.”

  “Two nights running,” said Mr. Tedder, scratching his head. “There was that cruiser of Jonnatt’s yesterday, and now all these.”

  “Well if it wasn’t them,” said the owner of the green houseboat, “it’s up to the police to find out who it was. And to stop it. A pretty pass we’ve come to if I can’t sleep in this reach without having to get up at all hours to see that no rogue’s casting off my mooring ropes.”

  “It’s all very well,” said George Owdon. “But we caught them at it when they were turning this yacht adrift.”

  “And I tied her up all right last night,” said her owner.

  “We find her with her mast in that tree,” said Joe. “There’s leaves on her deck yet. If you’d been a bit sooner you’d have seen us getting of her clear.”

  “You hear that,” said Pete’s father.

  “It certainly looked as if they were casting her off,” said George.

  Half a dozen people at once were trying to talk to Mr. Tedder.

  “Something’s got to be done.”

  “Don’t you keep an eye on things at all?”

  “Police can’t be up all night and all day,” said Mr. Tedder.

  “We’ll have to go turn about in keeping watch.”

  “We will if you will.”

  The crowd drifted away, the owners of the boats that had been cast loose, George Owdon and his friend, still talking to Mr. Tedder and telling him what ought to be done as he walked slowly off the staithe.

  “Tom was right,” said Joe. “They couldn’t prove nothing.”

  “Drat ’em,” said Bill. “What about smoking them eels?”

  “What about breakfast?” said Pete.

  “Breakfast!” exclaimed Joe. “We oversleep breakfast. What about dinner?”

  *

  “Shove that kettle on the primus,” said Bill. “No need for anybody to go home. We got bread. We got cheese. We got apples. We got a tin of milk. And we got tea. Where are them sacks? Joe and me’ll be getting wood for the stove and we’ll be back, come that kettle on the boil.”

  Twenty minutes later they had breakfast and dinner all in one. Two sacks full of waste scraps of wood and shavings lay in the cockpit. Joe and Bill had taken the empty sacks to Jonnatt’s boatshed as usual, but had been angrily told to clear out by the boatmen who were still sure they were to blame for the trouble of the day before. They had been luckier at the boatsheds down the river and had got a good lot of pitchpine, which always burns well, cedar which burns still better and mahogany shavings which they thought ought to make plenty of smoke.

  “Chimbley’s good and wide, that’s one thing,” said Joe. “We’ll take the cap off. That’s easy. Put a stick across and they’ll hang beautiful.”

  “I’ll bend up some wire hooks,” said Bill. “There’s that bit of telephone wire I save. I know that’d come handy for something.”

  Then came the skinning of the eels. This was done by Joe and Bill together. Joe cut the skin round the neck of an eel. Bill held its head in a bit of cloth to stop it from slipping through his fingers. Joe worked round with his knife till he had loosened half an inch of skin. Then, with another bit of cloth, he got hold of that and pulled. After a few slips, pull devil, pull baker, pull Bill, pull Joe, the skin peeled off inside out like a glove. Then the skinned eel was handed over to Pete, who did the cleaning, getting rid of the insides of the eel and the black blood along the backbone, while Joe and Bill were getting the skin off another.

  “Mucketty truck,” said Pete, scraping away with his knife.

  “You get it all out,” said Bill. “Poison a chap, that would, if you left it in.”

  The next job was to get the eels into the chimney. They took off the tin smoke cap they had made to prevent the smoke blowing down their chimney instead of drawing up it. Bill bent four bits of wire into S-shaped hooks. Joe held a stout stick while he hung the eels on it, and then, carefully, they lowered the eels down the chimney till the ends of the stick rested on the edges of the chimney pot. Meanwhile, Pete had lit the fire and come up on the cabin-top again to see how things were going.

  “There’s not much smoke coming up,” said Joe. “You go down and stoke a bit.”

  Pete went below and came out again in a hurry.

  “It smoke into the cabin something awful,” he said.

  “Bound to,” said Joe.

  “Can’t help that,” said Bill.

  “What about putting the cap back?” said Joe.

  “Could do,” said Pete. “That’d stop it blowing back.”

  “That don’t want to draw too well,” said Bill. “There’s plenty smoke coming out atop.”

  “There’s plenty more in the cabin,” said Pete.

  All three went below.

  Pete choked. Joe coughed. Bill wiped his smarting eyes.

  “That’ll smoke us right out,” said Pete.

  “You can’t smoke eels without smoke,” said Bill.

  “They ain’t half bad stewed,” said Pete.

  “We’ll smoke ’em now we’
ve started,” said Joe.

  “Try shutting the door,” said Bill.

  “Put the cap on the chimbley quick,” said Joe. “We’ll have the fire out if that go on blowing back.”

  Bill fixed the tin cap on the chimney. That helped a little but not much. At least as much smoke found its way out into the cabin as found its way up past the eels. But, as Bill pointed out, if the fire drew too well the eels would be broiled instead of being smoked.

  Pete started choking and could not stop.

  “You’d better get out, young Pete,” said Bill, and Pete struggled out into the cockpit.

  “Shut that door,” said Joe, and Pete shut the door behind him. In a few minutes his choking stopped and he opened the door again. A red face showed through the smoke in the cabin and told him to shut it and keep it shut. He could hear that they were putting more wood on the fire. Clouds of smoke blew from the chimney. Presently the door suddenly opened and Joe put his head out and took deep breaths of air. “It’s when the grease drop on the fire,” panted Joe, and disappeared again.

  Then Bill put his head out. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he grinned cheerfully.

  “I’m going to fish,” said Pete.

  “Fish away,” said Bill. “We could do with some perch. Joe and me’s going to smoke them eels or bust.”

  “Shut that door,” shouted Joe out of the smoke in the cabin, and Bill took one more breath, and shut the door behind him.

  *

  An hour went by and then another. Pete sat fishing on the cabin roof. The eel-smokers coughed and choked below, putting their heads out now and again to save their lives. They had long stopped saying anything. First one head showed in the smoke that poured from the door the moment it was opened, and then the other, and then for as long as they could bear it, they shut themselves with the smoke.

  There is always a chance of a perch by the staithe, and Pete was fishing with small red worms that had spent a week in moss and were at their very best. They were grand worms, red, bright and lively, but for some reason the perch that usually hang about the wooden piling and camp-shedding were not on the feed. One after another Pete kept catching small roach. Big roach are not bad when you have nothing better, but little ones are no good to a cook, and Pete put them back in the water as fast as he caught them, hoping every moment to see the two dips and the steady plunge of the float that would mean that a perch had taken his worm. But none of the bites were like that. Now the float would slip sideways, now it would sink a quarter of an inch deeper in the water, now it would do no more than steady itself in the stream. At each of these signals, Pete struck. Each one of them meant, if he was quick enough, another roach to be unhooked and dropped back into the river. It was disappointing, but anything was better than being smoked like the eels.