“You’re jolly late,” said Starboard.
“Look here,” said Tom, “what’s the use of fixing up a Coot Club meeting if you three go off pirating and don’t come back till nearly dark?”
“No, but listen,” said Joe, at the tiller. “It ain’t pirating.”
“It’s B.P.S. business,” said one of the rowers, Bill. “It’s No. 7…. Something got to be done.”
“What?”
“No. 7?”
“What’s happened?”
All thoughts of plans proposed or rejected were gone for the moment. No. 7 nest. The club’s own coot. The coot with the white feather.
“Everything was all right when we went by,” said Port.
“It’s since then,” said Joe. “One o’ them big motor-cruisers o’ Rodley’s go an’ moor right on top of her.”
Tom ran into the shed for their plan of the river, which hung from a nail on the wall. There was no need of it, for every one of the six members of the Coot Club knew exactly where No. 7 nest was to be found.
“What did you do?” Starboard asked.
“We let Pete do the talking,” said Joe. “As polite as he know how. ‘If you please’ and ‘Do you mind’ an’ all that.”
“Well?”
Pete, a small, black-haired boy, the owner of the enormous telescope, spoke up.
“I tell ’em there’s a coot’s nest with eggs nigh hatching,” he said. “I tell ’em the old coots dussen’t come back.”
“We see her scuttering about t’other side of the river,” said Bill, forgetting his handkerchief was a turban and taking it off and wiping his hot face with it. “She’ll never go back if that cruiser ain’t shifted.”
“And didn’t they go?” said Starboard.
“Just laugh. That’s what they do,” said Peter. “Say the river’s free to all, and the birds can go nest somewhere else, and then a woman stick her head out o’ the cabin and the rest of ’em go in.”
“What beasts!” said Port.
“I try again,” said Joe. “I knock on the side, and some of ’em come up, and I tell ’em ’twas a beastly shame, just when eggs is going to hatch.”
“And I tell ’em there’s a better place for mooring down the river,” said Bill.
“They tell us to clear out,” said Joe.
“And mind our own business,” put in Peter.
“I tell ’em ’twas our business,” said Joe. “I start telling ’em about the B.P.S.”
“They just slam off down below. Makin’ a noise in them cabins fit to wake the dead,” said Bill.
“Let’s all go down there,” said Starboard.
“I’ll deal with them,” said Tom. “The fewer of us the better. Much easier for one.” He looked at the Titmouse in her neat awning. “I’ll take the punt.”
“Can’t we come, too?” said Joe.
“We could skip across and tell Ginty we’re going to be late,” said Port.
“What about the meeting?” said Bill.
“No,” said Tom. “Meeting’s closed. Plan’s gone bust, anyhow. I’m going down the river at once.”
Already he had untied the old Dreadnought, pulled her paddle free and was working her out of the dyke.
“Look here,” he said. “If it’s bad as you say, I may have to do something pretty tough.”
“We did try talking to ’em,” said Bill.
“Well, if there’s a row about it, you’d better be out of it. All Coots off the river. Go and do some weeding for someone in the village. Slip along with them, Twins, and make sure someone sees them doing it.”
The Dreadnought slid out from the dyke into the open river. The last of the tide was running down, and Tom, with steady strokes of his paddle, sent the old home-made punt shooting down the middle of the stream to get all the help he could from the current.
The two elder Coots and the three small boys hurried to the edge of the doctor’s lawn.
“I wish we could all go,” said Joe, as they watched the punt vanish round the next bend of the river.
“We can’t,” said Starboard. “Those beasts have seen you three and talked to you, and you’ve just got to be somewhere else. Tom knows. He’s counting on you to be properly out of the way.”
“He’ll deal with them all right,” said Joe.
“I knew he would,” said Bill.
“Pitch your tea in quick,” said Port, and the pirates finished up the cold tea in the jug, and were given huge marmalade sandwiches to cram in as fast as possible. Meanwhile, there was the Titmouse with her new awning. They looked at her, and munched.
“Don’t see why we shouldn’t all rig up like that,” said Joe, and Tom would have been very pleased to hear him.
“Hurry up,” said Starboard.
All five of them embarked in the Death and Glory and pulled up-river to Horning Staithe, to make it as sure as possible that everyone should know that the three smaller Coots, at least, had had no hand in whatever Tom, away by himself down the river, should find he had to do.
CHAPTER IV
THE ONLY THING TO DO
WITH steady strokes of his paddle, a long reach forward, a pull, and then a turn of the blade at the right moment, Tom drove the old Dreadnought down the river. Everything was going wrong. First the twins getting tied up for the last week of the holidays and now these wretched Hullabaloos mooring on the top of No. 7. If only it had been any other nest, he told himself, it would not have been quite so bad. Horrible anyway for any bird to be cut off from her nest by a thing like that. He remembered what he had just heard of a cruiser charging through a little fleet of sailing boats instead of keeping out of the way of them as by the rule of the road she ought to do. He remembered little Miss Millett in her houseboat with the china rocked off her shelves. He remembered the smell of burnt fat and the spattering grease as that cruiser roared past the Titmouse. And these people had refused to move even when Pete had explained to them what they were doing. Well, move they jolly well should. Even if he had to wait till dark. Tom found it somehow easier to forget his own disappointment in the thought of the enemies of No. 7. Yet, already, he was a good deal bothered in his mind. “Don’t get mixed up with foreigners.” That, he knew, was the safe rule of parents and the Coot Club alike. But the thing couldn’t be helped. Not if they wouldn’t move when they were asked. There was only the one thing to do, and he would have to do it. Lucky that so few people seemed to be about. And then, just as he shot past the Ferry, he saw George Owdon leaning on the white-painted rail of the ferry-raft and looking down at him.
If George had been any other kind of larger boy, Tom might have asked his advice and help. But he knew better than that. George might be Norfolk, like himself, but he was in his way more dangerous even than the cruiser. George was an enemy. He had much more pocket-money than any of the Coots but was known to make more still by taking the eggs of rare birds and selling them to a man in Norwich. He would be ready to go and smash the nest on purpose if he guessed that Tom and his Bird Protection Society were particularly interested. So Tom paddled steadily on.
“You’re in a hurry, young Tom.”
Tom, by instinct, paddled rather less fast.
“Not particularly,” he said.
“What’s the secret this time?” jeered George Owdon.
Tom did not answer. He was soon round the bend below the inn and out of sight from the Ferry. He could not tell what was going to happen, but he wished George Owdon had not been there.
He paddled faster again, and presently heard a strange jumble of noise from farther down the river. Faint at first, two tunes quietly quarrelling with each other, it grew louder as he came nearer until at last it seemed that the two tunes were having a fight at the top of their voices.
Suddenly he knew that all this noise was coming from one boat, a big motor-cruiser, that same Margoletta that had upset his cooking for him in the Titmouse. So that was the enemy. There it was (Tom could not think of a thing like that as “she”) moored right
across the mouth of the little bay in which the coot with the white feather had built her nest. A narrow drain opened out here into the river. There were reeds in the entry, and among these reeds, just sheltered from the stream, was No. 7. Members of the Coot Club had watched every stage of the building. The Death and Glories had found it almost as soon as the coots had begun to lay one bit of pale dead reed upon another. That was a long time ago now, in term-time, when Port and Starboard were away at school, and Tom could get on the river only at week-ends. Joe, Bill and Pete had each in turn played truant in order to visit it. There had been those days of great rains and Tom had feared that the rising river would have drowned the nest or even swept it away. But the coots had not let the floods disturb them. They had simply added to their nest, and, when the water had fallen again he had come down the river just as he was coming now, to find the coot with the white feather sitting on her eggs on the top of a broad, high, round platform made of woven reeds.
And now was all that to go for nothing? The bows of the big cruiser were moored to the bank above the opening. The stern was moored to the bank below it. “So that the lazy brutes can go whichever way they like on shore without having to use their dinghy,” said Tom to himself. But he could hardly hear himself speak for noise. There was nobody to be seen on the deck of the Margoletta. All the Hullabaloos were down below in the two cabins, and in one cabin there was a wireless set and a loud speaker, and in the other they were working a gramophone.
GEORGE OWDON WAS LOOKING DOWN AT HIM
Tom let his Dreadnought drift down with the stream, close by the Margoletta. Should he or should he not try to persuade those Hullabaloos to move? If one of them had been looking out of a porthole he might have had a try. Not that he thought for a moment that persuading would be much good with people who on a quiet spring evening could shut themselves up in their cabins with a noise like that. And anyway the Death and Glories had tried it and had told them about the coots.
The coots made up his mind for him. There they were, desperately swimming up and down under the bank opposite the little bay that the cruiser had closed to them. Up and down they swam, giving small sharp cries of distress quite unlike their usual sturdy honk. They hardly seemed to know what to do, sometimes taking short flights upstream, spattering the water as they rose, flopping into it again, and swimming down. And Tom knew just why they were so upset. Close behind the cruiser and the dreadful deafening noise was the nest that they had built against the floods, and the eggs that must be close on hatching. Something had to be done at once. How long had the coots been kept from their eggs already? It was no use trying to talk to those Hullabaloos. If he did it would only put them on their guard and make things much more difficult.
Tom paddled quietly in to the bank below the Margoletta, landed, tied the Dreadnought to a bunch of reeds, and then crept along the bank until he came to the stern mooring rope of the cruiser. He stopped and listened. Those two tunes went on with the battle, each trying to drown the other. He heard loud, unreal laughter. Bending low, Tom pulled up the rond-anchor,1 coiled its rope as carefully as if it were his own, and laid anchor and coiled rope silently on the after-deck. A single glance told him that the nest and the eggs were still there. They might so easily have been smashed during the cruiser’s mooring.
So far, so good. Bent double, he hurried back along the bank and, in a moment, was afloat in the Dreadnought. There was no sign that anybody in the Margoletta suspected that anything was happening. He paddled upstream past the cruiser and landed again. Creeping down along the bank he pulled up the bow anchor, coiled its rope, and laid it on the foredeck. There was such a noise going on in both cabins that he need not have been so careful. Then he leant lightly against the Margoletta’s bows. Was she going to move, or would the stream itself keep her where she was? She stirred. She was moving. The stream was pushing its way between her and the bank. In a moment Tom was back in the Dreadnought, pushed off and with a hard quick stroke or two set himself moving downstream, away from Horning and home and the Coot Club’s private stronghold in the dyke below his father’s house.
He had made up his mind about that before ever he had touched the Margoletta’s anchors. Supposing the Hullabaloos should see him going upstream they would be sure to think of the Death and Glories who had gone that way after asking them to move. That would never do. He must lead them downstream instead. With luck he would be round the bend and away before they saw him. He would leave the Dreadnought somewhere down the river, and slip back to Horning by road. Lucky it was that it wasn’t the Titmouse he had taken.
He paddled swiftly and silently downstream. The Margoletta was adrift and moving. He could see into the little bay. He glanced across at the troubled coots. Another few minutes and they would be back at the nest. Unless, of course, they had been kept away too long already. He passed the cruiser and settled down to hard paddling. What a row those Hullabaloos were making. They still did not know they were adrift. And then, just as he reached the turn of the river below them, he heard an angry yell, and, looking back over his shoulder, saw the Margoletta out in mid-stream, drifting down broadside on, and on the open deck between the two cabins a man pointing at him and shouting, and, worse, watching him through fieldglasses.
The thing was done now, and the hunt was up. Tom wished he had oars with outriggers in the Dreadnought, to drive her along quicker than he could with his single home-made paddle. He forced her along with tremendous jerks, using all the strength in his body. He had been laughed at for making that paddle so strong, but he was glad of it now. Already he was out of sight of the Margoletta, but she would be round the bend in a moment as soon as they got their engine started, and in this next reach there was nowhere to hide. He must go on and on, to make them think that the boy who cast them loose had nothing to do with Horning, but had come from somewhere down the river. If only a nice bundle of weeds would wrap itself round their propeller. But it was too early in the year to have much hope of that. Yes, there it was. He heard the roar of the engine. They were after him. And then the roar stopped suddenly and there were two or three loud separate pops. Engine trouble. Good! Oh, good! He might even get right down to the dyke by Horning Hall Farm, where he had friends and could hide the old Dreadnought and know she would come to no harm.
THEY HAD SEEN HIM
On and on. He must not stop for a moment. He paddled as if for his life. Whatever happened they must not catch him. Mixed up with foreigners? Why, that would be the very worst kind of mixing. For everybody who did not understand about No. 7, he would be entirely in the wrong.
He thought of landing by the boathouse with the ship for a weather vane, startling the black sheep, and leaving the Dreadnought in the dyke below the church. But supposing the Hullabaloos were to see her, why, the first person they asked about her would tell them to whom she belonged. No, he must go much farther than that.
He was close to the entry to Ranworth Broad when he heard again the loud drumming of the Margoletta’s engine away up the river. Too late to turn in there. The dyke was so straight. They would be at the entry long before he could get hidden. He paddled desperately on and twice passed small dykes in which he could have hidden the punt and then dared not stop her and turn back. Louder and louder sounded the pursuing cruiser. Would he have to abandon ship and take to the marshes on foot? And with every moment the thing he had done seemed somehow worse.
And then he rounded a bend in the river and caught sight of the Teasel. That yacht had been lying in that place for over a week. He had noticed her several times when sailing up and down inspecting nests for the Bird Protection Society. There was nearly always a pug-dog looking out from her well or lying in the sunshine of her foredeck. Tom had noticed the pug, but had never seen the people who were sailing the Teasel. At least for some time now they had not been sailing. Just living aboard, it seemed. And today it looked as if they had gone away and left her. The dinghy was there, but that meant nothing. There was no pug on the foredeck, and the
awning was up over cabin and well. Perhaps the people were away on shore. And, at that moment, Tom had an idea. He could abandon his ship and yet not lose her. He could take to the reeds and yet not leave the Dreadnought to be picked up by the enemy. All those yachts were fitted out in the same way. Every one of them had a rond-anchor fore and aft for mooring to the bank. Every one of them had an anchor of another kind, a heavy weight, stowed away in the forepeak, for dropping in the mud when out in open water.…
Tom looked over his shoulder. The cruiser was not yet in sight, but it would be at any moment. Things could not be worse than they were whatever happened. His mind was made up. With two sweeps of the paddle he brought the Dreadnought round and close under the bows of the moored yacht. He was on deck in a flash with the painter in his hand. Up with the forehatch. There was the heavy weight he wanted. Tom lay down and reached for it and hoisted it on deck. He made his own painter fast to the rope by which he lowered the clumsy lump of iron into the punt. He wedged his paddle under the seat, and stamped the gunwale under, deeper, deeper, while the water poured in. The Dreadnought, full of water, and with that heavy weight to help her, went to the bottom of the river. Tom scrambled to his feet, jammed the hatch down on the anchor rope, and took a flying leap from the Teasel’s fore-deck into the sheltering reeds.
1 A rond-anchor is a stockless anchor with only one fluke for mooring to the rond or bank.
CHAPTER V
ABOARD THE TEASEL
WILLIAM was not aboard the Teasel. He had had a rather upsetting day, what with being left alone in the boat in the morning and having to make room for these newcomers in the afternoon. For some little time after tea he had lain as usual on the foredeck, catching the last of the sunshine and knowing that he made a noble sight for anybody who might be sailing up or down the river. But the short spring day was ending. People were settling down for the night. There was no one to admire him. He went back into the well and heard Dorothea say what a handsome pug he was, but those newcomers seemed unable to do their washing up without splashing. He went on into the cabin. Mrs. Barrable was writing a letter and took no notice of him. He was annoyed to find some of her paint-brushes soaking in a jam-pot half full of turpentine, left on the floor just where he could not help coming across it. If he had not been prudent in sniffing, that turpentine might have ruined his nose for a week. How careless people were. Thoroughly sulky, William went out again through the well, getting dreadfully splashed as he did so, climbed on deck, and went off along his private gang-plank to the shore to dig up and enjoy anew one or two treasure smells that he had hidden, some little distance away, on the strip of firm ground that lay behind the fringe of reeds.
Coot Club Page 4