Coot Club. Arthur Ransome
on the table, taken some patent blocks to pieces and given them a thorough oiling. Every minute the twins had expected to hear a soft tap on the window…. Tom, bringing news of No. 7. But there had been none. They woke, wondering what had happened, and, this morning, were almost ready to hurry their father out of the house. It was their daily business to see that he went off with tidy hat and gloves to spend the day as a solicitor. And today, of all days, he seemed dreadfully inclined to dally.
“Here you are, A.P.,” said Starboard, handing into the car the despatch-case full of legal papers which her father had brought from Norwich yesterday and, as usual, was taking back unopened to the office.
“Half the holidays gone,” said he, sitting in the car, gently pressing the pedal with his foot and warming up the engine before starting.
“Two weeks more,” said Starboard.
“Two more practice races,” he said, “and then, if we get Flash tuned up to her best, we’ll just show them.”
Port used the brown gloves to give a last rub round to the hard hat, and put them in at the window. Mr. Farland set the hat on his head, took it off again to his daughters, tooted the horn and was gone.
“Come on,” said Starboard. “We’ll know in a minute. Let’s go by the drawbridge.”
But Mrs. McGinty was standing in the doorway. “Will you bairns be away to the village?” she asked. Precious minutes were wasted while she told them the things that were wanted at the village shop. Starboard scribbled them down on a bit of paper.
“I’m wanting the caulifloors for your denner,” said Mrs. McGinty.
“All right, Ginty,” said Starboard. And the two of them bolted across the garden and vanished into the osier bushes.
Tom, sleeping in the Titmouse, was waked very early by hearing a boat brushing through the reeds at the mouth of the dyke. He bobbed up at once to listen and hit his head against a thwart. Was it the enemy coming to look for him? But, of course, it was only the Death and Glories coming to ask what in the end Tom had done about No. 7. He told them and saw that, as boatbuilders’ sons, they were a good deal shocked.
“Cast ’em adrift?” said Joe. “Did you oughter ’a done that?”
“Couldn’t do anything else,” said Tom.
“But how didn’t they cotch ye?”
Tom told, briefly, how he had had to make a submarine of the Dreadnought. Of that they thoroughly approved.
“Gee whizz!” said Joe.
“That were a real good ’un,” said Bill.
“Prime,” said Pete.
They wanted there and then to go down the river to have another look at No. 7, but Tom thought better not, and they decided to look at a few upstream nests instead.
“And look here,” said Tom, as the Death and Glory went off out of the dyke. “Try to find out, if you can, how long those people are going to have the Margoletta. I’ll have to keep out of the way till they’ve gone.”
He went into the house for breakfast. What was the good of cooking in the Titmouse if he could not safely take her down the river? He went to look at the baby. It seemed a hundred years since yesterday when he had come back from Norwich with his hands smelling of tarred rope, planning all kinds of cruises. His father seemed to think the affair with the Hullabaloos was over. “They’ll have forgotten about it themselves this morning,” he said, “unless their livers are badly out of order.” But Tom thought otherwise. His father had not heard the anger in their voices when they were talking to the old lady of the Teasel. The only real hope was that those people would presently be giving up the Margoletta. A week was the usual time for which people hired a boat. He would have to keep out of sight until they were gone. It was hard to lose even a few days now that he could sleep aboard the Titmouse, but, at least, he could be finishing up those lockers. And as soon as breakfast was over Tom went back to his ship, and was hard at work in her when he heard two short blasts on a whistle and two longer ones, from among the bushes on the farther side of the dyke.
The twins. They, too, would have to be told how desperately, in the saving of No. 7, he had got mixed up with foreigners. He scrambled ashore, took an old iron winding handle from its place just inside the shed, and went along the dyke to the drawbridge. The handle belonged to a windlass he had got last summer from a wherry that was being broken up. The windlass was the most important part of the drawbridge. Tom fitted the handle in place, pulled out a bar that locked the bridge in its framework, and then slowly unwinding, lowered the plank with its two handrails, until the end of the plank rested on the other side of the dyke. The plank was strong enough to bear even Dr. Dudgeon or Mr. Farland, both of whom had been known to use it instead of going round by road.
“Hullo!” said Tom gravely.
“What’s the matter?” said Port.
“Couldn’t you get them to move?” said Starboard. “Is No. 7 done after all?”
“Is that why you didn’t come and tell us last night?”
“No. 7’s all right,” said Tom. “At least, it was when I came home. And it was pretty dark before I got back. But things went wrong a bit. I’ve gone and got most awfully mixed up with foreigners. It was the Margoletta on the top of No. 7, and I sent her adrift….”
“Good,” said Starboard.
“I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” said Tom. “And the worst of it is they saw me. One chap had field-glasses. And then although I went down river, they thought I was one of the Death and Glories. So I’ve got the whole Coot Club in a mess.”
“The Death and Glories’ll be all right,” said Starboard.
“Anyway, it isn’t your fault,” said Port. “One of us would have had to do it.”
“But how did you get away?” said Starboard.
“I got mixed up with another lot,” said Tom. “I forgot to tell you about a couple of kids I met in the train. Well, they’re in the Teasel, you know, where that pug’s usually hanging about, and there’s an old lady in the Teasel with them….” And then he told of how he had boarded the Teasel and used her mudweight, and sunk the Dreadnought, and hid in the rushes, and how, somehow, after the Hullabaloos had been sent off down the river, he had gone back aboard the Teasel by invitation, and had forgotten about these people being foreigners too, and had even told them all about No. 7, and let out something about the Coot Club itself. “You know, she really had been most awfully sporting,” said Tom, trying to explain as much to himself as to the twins how it was that he had come to forget the first duty of a Norfolk Coot. “Her brother was a victim,” he added, “but I didn’t know that until afterwards….”
And at that moment he gave a sudden start and listened. There was the sharp, impatient bark of a small dog, close behind the house. It sounded almost as if it came from the river. Tom had too lately lain in the reeds face to face with William not to know that voice again.
Without another word he crept round the side of the house and peered out through the willows. The others followed him on tiptoe. Yes. Tied to one of the small white mooring posts at the edge of the lawn was a dinghy, and in it, alone, a pug.
“She must be here,” whispered Tom, and they slipped quietly back to the shed.
“Come to complain?” said Starboard.
“She was awfully decent yesterday,” said Tom.
And then there was a noise of feet on the gravel walk at the river side of the house, and voices talking, and again an impatient bark.
“No, William! You stay where you are. It would make all the difference