Coot Club. Arthur Ransome
ago. They’ll have had their dinners and be on the river by now…. Yes, Madam. Let me give you a hand.” He was talking now to Mrs. Barrable, the old lady, who had just found Dick and Dorothea. The station-master reached up to help Dorothea down with her suit-case.
“Well, and here you are,” said Mrs. Barrable, kissing Dorothea and shaking hands with Dick.
“And who was that other boy?” she asked.
“We made friends with him in the train,” said Dorothea. “He knows a lot about boats.”
“And birds,” said Dick.
Mrs. Barrable watched him as he hurried through the gate and down the path to the road. “Haven’t I seen him before?” she said. “And who are the Port and Starboard he was asking about?”
“That’s Tom Dudgeon, the doctor’s son from Horning,” said the station-master. “You’ll maybe have seen him on the river in his little boat. He’s not often away from the water in the holidays. And Port and Starboard, queer names for a couple of girls….” But there was the guard, just waiting to start the train, and the station-master never finished his sentence.
“Busy man,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Come along, Dick. Written any more books, Dot? You really have done well in keeping your luggage down. We’ll easily find room for these. I’ve got a boy with a hand-cart to take your things to the river. We’re going down by water. Longer but more fun. There’s a motor-launch going down to Horning, and the young man says he’ll put us aboard. The Teasel’s lying a good long way below the village. But we must have something to eat first, and I must get you some boots like those that boy was wearing. You’ll want them every time you step ashore.”
CHAPTER II
DISAPPOINTMENT
NEVER IN ALL THEIR lives had Dick and Dorothea seen so many boats. Mrs. Barrable had taken them shopping at a store that seemed to sell every possible thing for the insides and outsides of sailors. She had taken them to lunch at an inn where everybody was talking about boats at the top of his voice. And now they had gone down to the river to look for the Horning boatman with his motor-launch. The huge flags of the boat-letters were flying from their tall flag-staffs. Little flags, copies of the big ones, were fluttering at the mastheads of the hired yachts. There were boats everywhere, and boats of all kinds, from the big black wherry with her gaily painted mast, loading at the old granary by Wroxham bridge, and meant for nothing but hard work, to the punts of the boatmen going to and fro, and the motor-cruisers filling up with petrol, and the hundreds of big and little sailing yachts tied to the quays, or moored in rows, two and three deep, in the dykes and artificial harbours beside the main river.
“Why are such a lot of the boats wearing dust-covers?” asked Dorothea.
“Rain-coats, really,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Those are awnings. Everybody rigs them at night to make an extra room by giving a roof to the steering well. And, of course, when the boats are not in use the awnings keep them dry. Lots of the boats are not let yet. Luckily for us it’s early in the season. Later on people come here from all over England, and in the summer Wroxham must be like a fairground.”
“It’s rather like one now,” said Dorothea, listening to the gramophones and the hammering in the boat-sheds. “Oh, look. There’s someone just starting. Do all the big boats have little ones like chickens hanging on behind?”
“Dinghies,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Suppose you’re in a yacht and want to fetch the milk or post your letters, you just jump into your dinghy and use your oars.”
“We have rowed once,” said Dick, “but only for a few minutes.”
And then Mrs. Barrable saw the boatman waving to them. A minute or two later they were off themselves, in a little motor-launch, purring down Wroxham Reach. In the bows of the launch were the two small suit-cases, and the parcels that had been sent down to the river by the people at the village store. Dorothea looked happily at one large, awkward, bulging parcel. Mrs. Barrable had bought them cheap oilskins and sou’westers as well as sea-boots. There was no excuse for wearing such things on a fine spring day, with bright sunshine pouring down, but just to look at that bulging parcel made Dorothea feel she was something of a sailor already.
Once round the bend at the low end of the reach, they had left all the noise and bustle of Wroxham behind them. Tall trees were growing on either side of the river. There were quiet little houses among the trees, and green lawns at the water’s edge, with water-hens strutting about on the grass as if they were pigeons or peacocks. A man with long thigh boots and a yachting cap was busy with a lawn-mower.
“Look,” said Dorothea. “There’s a sailor mowing the grass.”
“Most people here have got at least one foot in the water,” said Mrs. Barrable, “and they do say a lot of the babies are born web-footed, like ducks.”
“Not really?” said Dick.
“I’m not so sure,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Every infant in this place seems able to sail a boat as soon as it can walk.”
“Were you born here?” asked Dorothea, glancing, in spite of herself, at Mrs. Barrable’s neat, rubber-soled shoes.
“At Beccles,” said Mrs. Barrable. “On another river. Not very far away.”
Not everybody, thought Dorothea, could be born on a river, but at least she and Dick would do their best to make up for lost time.
The houses came to an end. Here and there, looking through the trees, Dick and Dorothea caught the flash of water. Through a narrow opening they saw a wide lake with boats sailing in a breeze, although, in the shelter of the trees, the few sailing yachts they had passed had been drifting with hardly enough wind to give them steerage way. A little further down the river they caught a glimpse of another bit of open water. Then again they were moving between thickly wooded banks. Suddenly they heard a noise astern of them, and one of the big motor-cruisers that they had seen at Wroxham came roaring past them, leaving a high angry wash that sent the launch tossing.
“Just like real sea,” said Dorothea, holding on to the gunwale and determined not to be startled.
“They got no call to go so fast,” said the boatman. “Look at that now. Upset his dinner in the bilge likely.”
The boatman pointed ahead at a little white boat tied to a branch of a tree. It was very much smaller than any yacht they had seen, hardly bigger, in fact, than the dinghies most of the yachts were towing. It had a mast, and an awning had been rigged up over part of it, to make a little shelter for cooking. The wash of the big cruiser racing past sent the little boat leaping up against the overhanging boughs, and a great cloud of smoke poured suddenly out.
“It’s Tom Dudgeon,” said Dorothea.
“It’s the Titmouse,” said Dick. “There’s the name.”
The boatman slowed up the launch for a moment as they went by.
Tom Dudgeon, who had been kneeling on the floor to do his cooking, looked out with a very red face. They saw that he had a frying-pan in his hand.
He nodded to the boatman. “Bacon fat all over everywhere,” he said. “Oh, hullo!” he added, seeing Dick and Dorothea.
“Shame that is,” said the boatman as he put on speed again. “Proper young sailor is Tom Dudgeon. Keeps that little Titmouse of his like a new pin.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Now I dare say you can tell us who are the Port and Starboard he was talking about to the Wroxham station-master….”
“The station-master said they were queer names for girls,” added Dorothea.
The boatman laughed. “Port and Starboard,” he said. “We all call ’em that. Nobody call ’em anything else. Mr.