The Big Six: A Novel

by Arthur Ransome

  From time to time they passed fishermen, in moored boats out in the river, or sitting on the bank. They looked at them with new eyes. If those chaps only knew….

  “Any luck?” Bill would sing out in something like the manner of the fisherman of the Cachalot.

  “Nothing much,” would come the reply, and each time the Death and Glories heard it, they looked at each other and simmered with a secret joy.

  “We’re not to say nothing about it,” Joe reminded them. “Not till that old pike come back in a glass case.”

  “Wonder what that chap at the Roaring Donkey’ll say when he know.”

  “None too pleased he won’t be,” said Joe. “Why, if he’d have known we caught it, he’d have given us half a crown and we’d have thought we done well. But thirty bob and a tanner. Thirty bob and a tanner! There’s many a man don’t earn that in a week.”

  It was late in the afternoon before they drove round the bend by the ferry and came roaring up the home reach.

  “Wonder if they’ve come,” said Pete as they were nearing the doctor’s house, with the golden bream high above its thatched roof.

  “There’s Tom anyways,” said Joe. “Hullo!”

  Tom was waving from the lawn. “Pull in and tie up,” he shouted. “They’re here.”

  A smallish boy with large black-rimmed spectacles and a girl with straw-coloured plaits flying in the wind raced across the lawn to join Tom at the water’s edge.

  Joe steered to pass close by.

  “Meeting in the Coot Club shed,” said Tom.

  “Can’t stop,” said Joe. “Got to get up to the staithe before the shop shut.” Such is the effect of having a pocket full of money. He turned to Bill. “Give ’em a feast,” he whispered.

  “Good idea,” said Bill.

  “Coot Club meeting in our cabin,” said Pete.

  “Come on to the staithe all three,” shouted Joe. “Supper in the Death and Glory.”

  “In our cabin,” shouted Pete.

  There was hurried talk among the three on the bank. Something about telling Mrs. Barrable was heard aboard the Death and Glory as she swept by.

  “All right,” shouted Tom. “But they’ll have to tell the Admiral first.”

  “Good,” said Bill. “That just give us time.”

  “We’ll show ’em,” said Joe. “What about it?”

  “We got all Roy’s to choose from…. Mushroom soup…. That’s pretty good…. And what about a steak and kidney…. Tom give us that once in the shed….”

  “Christmas pudding,” said Pete.

  “Why not?” said Bill. “Gee whillikins, we’ll do it really proper.”

  The Death and Glory came foaming up towards the staithe.

  “Hullo,” said Joe, who was steering. “There’s Sir Garnet in our place. We’ll have to tie up ahead of her. Stand by to lower sail. No…. Never mind. Lower after we bring up. Tide’s flooding and we’ll better swing round and head this way.”

  Sir Garnet was the fastest trading wherry on the river. Her skipper, Jim Wooddall, and her mate, old Simon, were old friends of the Death and Glories, and of Tom Dudgeon, and indeed of all the members of the Coot Club who were scattered up and down the rivers at all the different villages at which Sir Garnet used to call. Jim Wooddall was just closing the door of his cabin, and had a small bag in his hand. Old Simon was coiling down a brand-new grass rope that they had been towing astern of them to get the viciousness out of it. Both men lifted hands in greeting, and the Death and Glories waved back.

  They brought the Death and Glory up to the staithe and made fast close by Sir Garnet. Jim Wooddall was already walking off.

  “Gone to catch the bus to Wroxham,” said old Simon. “Not sailing till the morning.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Bill.

  “Yarmouth.”

  “That’s grand rope,” said Joe.

  “Wicked when it’s new,” said old Simon, coiling down the last of it on the top of the hatches. “Well, I’m off, too. You’ll keep an eye on her? Don’t want nobody larking about.”

  “Nobody shan’t touch her,” said Joe, and old Simon strolled off to his cottage.

  “Come on, Pete,” said Bill. “We got to hurry before the shops shut. Come on, Joe.”

  Joe took a last look at the Death and Glory’s mooring ropes, slackened her stern warp, tightened the one at the bows, and ran after the other two.

  They were crossing the road to the shops when George Owdon and his friend rode up on their bicycles and jumped off beside them.

  “So you’re here again?” said George.

  “Any more boats cast off?” asked Bill.

  “Nobody to cast them off with you away unless it’s young Tom,” said George Owdon.

  “Not likely with us watching,” said his friend.

  They mounted their bicycles and rode off.

  “You didn’t ought to have said nothing,” said Joe.

  “Oh, it don’t matter,” said Bill. “Come on. George Owdon’s nothing. Where do we go first?”

  “Roy’s,” said Pete. “We want to get all stocked up before they come.”

  They walked, as millionaires, into Roy’s shop. Always before, when they had had money to spend, there had been so little of it that they had spent an hour or so outside the window, calculating just how far it would go, and deciding to go without chocolate for the sake of getting bananas, or to do without bananas because it was a long time since they had had tinned fruit. Today there was no need for doubt. They marched in with, first of all, the thought of the Coot Club supper in their heads.

  “Mushroom soup,” said Pete. “Three of them and three of us. Reckon we’ll do with three tins.”

  “A steak and kidney,” said Joe. “One of the big ones.”

  “And what about tins of beans?” said Bill.

  “Christmas pudding,” said Pete, reading aloud from this label. “‘Cover with water and boil for half an hour.’ That’s easy, like the steak and kidney. I say, Bill. Oughtn’t we have lit the fire?”

  “Burn up in two ticks,” said Bill. “What about loganberries? And we want plenty of that milk chocolate they give us that time at Acle Bridge.”

  They walked round and round the shop, looking at the shelves that were loaded with tinned foods of all kinds to meet the needs of the summer fleets of visitors sailing the hired boats. They read the notice: “Anything bought and not used will be taken back if returned unopened.” That removed the last faint touch of thrift. “Go on, Pete,” said Joe. “You have it if you want it. Shove it on the counter with the rest.”

  The pile of tins on the counter grew and grew. Steak and kidney, stewed oxtail, corned beef, peas, beans, pears, peaches, marmalade and strawberry jam, condensed milk, cocoa, chocolate both plain and nutty, a dozen bottles of ginger beer. The shopman, who knew them well, began to think that they were joking with him.

  “Who’s going to pay for all this?” he said.

  “We’ve got the money,” said Joe, pulling out his ten shilling note.

  “That’s all right,” said the shopman. “Has your ship come in?”

  “We just tie her up,” said Pete, and wondered why the shopman laughed.

  Laden with their buyings they staggered back to the Death and Glory. Bill lit the stove and put a saucepan of water on to boil. Then, crouching in the fo’c’sle, he lit the primus and put a kettle on that. They filled the new cupboards with their stores, keeping out only what was wanted for the feast. Pete was sent racing back to the shop to buy new batteries, badly needed for their pocket torches. He came back to find Joe fixing up the table, an old folding table, broken and discarded by one of the hire boats, mended by Joe and now one of the prides of the ship. It almost filled the space between the bunks.

  “That look all right, that do,” said Joe. “Now, when they come, we’ll put ’em to sit along this side, two of ’em, and one t’other side, by the door. We’ll want to be handy for the stove and things.”

  “Coots for
ever!” The visitors were standing on the staithe.

  “And ever! Come along in.”

  “I say,” said Dorothea. “She’s simply lovely. We’d never have known her. Real bunks. And a stove. I don’t know how you’ve done it.”

  “That stove was the worst,” said Pete. “Before we had that chimbley. One minute that’d come roaring up and us in a stew for sparks on deck, and next minute, come a change of wind, and smoke and flame start hunting us out of the cabin. Not bad now that’s painted green. Nobody’d know that were a pot chimbley.”

  “It looks very nice,” said Dorothea. “And I do like your orange curtains.”

  “My Mum made ’em,” said Pete.

  “Come on in,” said Joe. “You work along that side. What do you think of our cupboards?” He flung open a door and showed the row of stored tins. “Come on in, Dick. You work in next to Dot. And Tom by the door….”

  “What’s that?” asked Pete.

  “Camera,” said Dick, unslinging it.

  “Better hang it on that peg,” said Joe. “How long have you come for? Are you going to have the old Teasel again?”

  “Not this time,” said Dorothea. “The Admiral’s too busy painting. But we’re going sailing with Tom in Titmouse”

  “We’re all going to Ranworth tomorrow,” said Tom. “We’ve just told the Admiral. And Dick and Dot are coming to breakfast at our house so that we can start early.”

  “Taking photographs,” said Dick. “The Admiral’s letting me turn the bathroom into a dark room. I say, I’ll take a photograph of the Death and Glory. We’re going to be here till the end of the holidays, and at Easter we’re going to be here again and I’ll take photographs of all the birds’ nests.”

  “He’s practising all the time,” said Dorothea. “He can even take photographs in the dark.”

  “Flashlight,” explained Dick. “But I’m not much good at it yet.”

  “Did you finish that story?” asked Pete. “About the Outlaw of the Broads?”

  “It’s more than half done,” said Dorothea.

  “Come on in, Tom, and get sitting down. Bill’s ready with the soup.”

  Tom, who had been sitting on the floor of the cockpit with his feet inside the cabin, bumped his head getting up, and wriggled into the corner by the door. Bill was having a hard time watching two stoves at once. He poured pea soup into three mugs and three saucers. Joe dealt out six spoons, five in good condition and one that had lost part of its handle. This he kept for himself. Pete was cutting hunks of bread.

  Bill burnt his tongue hurrying with his soup, and tackled the tin of steak and kidney pudding, burning his fingers in getting it out of the hot water. It was one of those tins that open with the twisting of a key, but the key twisted off and Bill had to use a tin-opener.

  “Ouch!” said Bill, wringing his fingers.

  “Dip them in butter,” said Tom.

  Joe got out three plates which, with the three saucers, were used for the steak and kidney. Bill, more successfully this time, opened two tins of beans.

  “I say,” said Tom, who knew well that the Death and Glories mostly lived on bread and cheese. “You must have spent an awful lot of money. Somebody had a birthday?”

  “Ah!” said Joe.

  “We got plenty,” said Pete. “Earned it.” He caught Joe’s eye and said no more.

  “There’s been a lot of fuss about all those boats that got adrift,” said Tom. “People were watching the river again last night. Mr. Tedder’s been bothering Dad about it all. All because of that beast George telling everybody he’d caught us casting her off when we were tying up the one we found loose.”

  “Well there’s been no more” said Joe.

  Bill, who wanted darkness for reasons of his own, was watching the dimming light. The sun had gone down. Dusk was falling, but even in the cabin it was not as dark as he thought it ought to be.

  “Don’t bolt your grub, Pete,” he said. “There ain’t no hurry.”

  Everybody took the hint, and ate in stately slowness, while the saucepan bubbled on the stove. They talked of the wild chase of Tom by the Hullabaloos back in the Easter holidays. They talked of what could be done, with the Titmouse and the Death and Glory sailing in company. They talked of the foolishness of people tying up boats so that they could go adrift and bring blame on the heads of the innocent. They talked of the twins, Port and Starboard, who had been sent away to school in Paris. They talked of the gorgeous time that would be coming next year when the birds would be nesting and the Coot Club, thanks to Dick and his camera, would be able to make a collection of photographs as well as the usual catalogue of all the nests on the river.

  It grew darker and darker.

  “What about a lantern?” said Pete.

  “In a minute,” said Bill, who was holding a big tin in a damp rag that kept slipping and letting the heat get at his fingers while he was trying to use the tin-opener.

  “You can’t see what you’re doing,” said Tom.

  “Joe, you get the grease off them plates,” said Bill. He got his tin open and emptied its contents, black and shiny, out on a frying pan.

  “Shall I lend you a torch?” said Dick.

  “No, thanks,” said Bill and turned his back on the party, taking the frying pan with him into the fo’c’sle.

  They heard the striking of a match, which lit up the little fo’c’sle, though Bill’s body was in the way and they could not see what he was doing. They heard him strike another, and yet another.

  “What’s gone wrong, Bill?” said Joe.

  “Drat it, there ain’t nothing go wrong,” said Bill. “You wait, can’t you.”

  Another match flared in the fo’c’sle and went out. Then after a dark pause, they heard the gobble, gobble of liquid pouring from a bottle.

  Another match was lit, and the next moment Bill was coming backwards into the cabin, bearing the Christmas pudding in a sea of blue flames.

  “What about that?” said Bill.

  “I say,” said Dick.

  “It’s lovely,” said Dorothea. “Oughtn’t you to slop the flames all over it and get some of it burning on each plate?”

  Bill hesitated a moment.

  “Better not,” he said. “Wait till that die down.”

  He put the frying pan with the flaming pudding on the table and turned to the lighting of the lantern. The lantern, burning brightly, was hanging from its hook under the cabin roof by the time the sea of flame round the pudding had shrunk, died away, flamed up again and gone out. There was a most decided smell of methylated spirits.

  Bill carved his pudding and served it out, a helping each on three plates, and a helping each on the three saucers. He watched anxiously the faces of the visitors.

  “That want a lot of sugar,” he said.

  People helped themselves to sugar again and again and in the end the helpings of pudding disappeared.

  “It did burn beautifully,” said Dorothea.

  “That’s the way to make it,” said Bill, much relieved. “That don’t fare to light without you have a drop of spirit.”

  They washed it down with ginger beer, and finished up with oranges, the juice of which took away the last traces of the methylated, which had hung about in people’s mouths in spite of all the sugar. Everybody agreed that it had been a first class feast.

  Bill was just passing round a bag of humbugs and everybody was talking at once when there was a sudden bang on the roof of the cabin.

  “Who’s there?” called Joe.

  Tom, sitting close to the door, put his head out into the dark evening.

  “No, it’s not you I want to see,” said Mr. Tedder, the policeman. “It’s that young Joe and the others.”

  Not one of the crew of the Death and Glory could get out while their visitors were in the way. Dick and Dorothea joined Tom in the cockpit.

  “No, it’s not you neither,” said Mr. Tedder. “Glad to see you back.”

  Joe crawled along one bunk and Bill
along the other. Pete was already in the doorway.

  “Now, young Joe,” said Mr. Tedder, “you wasn’t here last night.”

  “No,” said Joe. “But there hasn’t been any more boats cast off. George Owdon say so.”

  “Not here there hasn’t,” said Mr. Tedder. “Where was you last night?”

  “Above the bridge at Potter Heigham.”

  “Ar,” said Mr. Tedder. “I heard you was there. And how many boats did you cast off? Word just came through there was half a dozen boats sent adrift below Potter Bridge last night.”

  “We never touch no boats,” said Joe.

  “You was there,” said Mr. Tedder. “I’ll ring through to Potter and see you in the morning.”

  He left them and went off along the stage. They heard his slow voice booming in the dusk. “They was there right enough. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Who’s that with him?” said Bill.

  “Only George Owdon,” said Tom.

  “Him again,” said Bill.

  “But they can’t patch that on us,” said Pete. “We never go below bridges. We never touch no boats at Potter.”

  “Nor anywheres else,” said Joe. “But if Mr. Tedder think we do.”

  The cheerful party came to a gloomy end.

  “It’s just bad luck,” said Tom.

  “It’s jolly unfair,” said Dick.

  “Our Dads’ll stop us off the river,” said Bill.

  “Oh they can’t,” said Dorothea. “Not for something you didn’t do.”

  “That makes no difference,” said Tom. He, like Joe, Bill and Pete, knew what the boatbuilders were thinking, and not only Mr. Tedder and George Owdon but all the people who were used to tie their boats along the river banks and leave them in confidence that nobody would interfere with them. Why even Mrs. Barrable had thought for a moment that they were to blame. And Tom’s own father.

  “They’ll have to emigrate,” said Dorothea.

  “What’s that?” asked Bill.

  “It’s what the pilgrims did when they were persecuted. They just went off in the Mayflower and founded America. We’ll all go to Ranworth and you can lie hid there just like Tom did when he was an outlaw.”