Coot Club. Arthur Ransome
a new young ’un of her own. Been as good as a mother to them two girls has Mrs. Dudgeon…. Steady now! … Did ever you see the like o’ that?” He swung his launch sharply aside to avoid a sailing yacht that was tacking to and fro and had suddenly gone about in mid-stream just after he had altered course to keep out of her way. “Probably never in a boat before,” said the boatman, “and in a week they’ll be laughing at the new-comers. A good nursery for sailing is the North River.”*
Dorothea looked happily at Dick, and Dick at Dorothea.
They left the trees. The river was beginning to be wider, flowing between reed-fringed banks with here and there a willow at the water’s edge. A fleet of five little yachts was sailing to meet them, tacking to and fro, like a cloud of butterflies.
“Racing,” said Mrs. Barrable.
The boatman looked over his shoulder. “If it’s no hurry, ma’am, I’ll pull into the side while they go by.”
“Of course.”
He shut off his engine and let the launch slide close along the bank until he caught hold of a willow branch to hold her steady. Dick caught another.
And then, as the first of the little racing boats flew towards them, spun round, and was off for the opposite bank, the boatman turned to Mrs. Barrable.
“There’s Port and Starboard, ma’am, if you want to see ’em. Fourth boat. Mr. Farland gener’lly do better’n that.”
The second boat shot by and the third. The fourth came sweeping across the river. “Ready about!” they heard the helmsman call, and the little boat shot up into the wind, with flapping sails, so close to the launch that Dorothea could have reached out and shaken hands with one of the two girls who were working the jib-sheets.
“He’ve a good crew, have Mr. Farland,” said the boatman, “though they don’t weigh as much as a man, the two of ’em together.”
“I don’t believe they’re much bigger than us,” said Dorothea delightedly.
“You’ll be seeing ’em again,” said the boatman starting up his engine. “They’ll be going down river past your boat and back again before they finish by the Swan at Horning.”
“Your boat,” he had said. How long now before she and Dick were pulling ropes like those two girls, and listening for the word from Mrs. Barrable at the tiller? Dorothea was planning a story. Why, if only she and Dick could sail like that, almost anything might happen. She looked at Dick. But Dick was busy with his pocket-book. In the winter holidays it had been full of stars, but with the year going on and nights getting shorter, birds had taken the place of stars. Heron, kestrel, coot, water-hen, he had already added to his list of birds seen, and just before meeting those racing boats he had seen a bird with two tufts sticking out from the top of its head, and only its slim neck showing above the water. He had known it at once for a crested grebe.
On and on they went down the river. They were coming now to another village. The launch slowed up. They were passing wooden bungalows and a row of houseboats. The river bent sharply round a corner. There was an old inn at the bend, the Swan. Then there was a staithe* with a couple of yachts tied up to it. Beyond the staithe were big boat-sheds, like those they had seen at Wroxham.
“This is Horning,” said Mrs. Barrable.
“Our boat’s not far now, is it?” said Dick.
“This is where Tom Dudgeon lives,” said Dorothea, “and those two girls.”
The launch stopped for a moment at one of the boat-sheds, and Dick and Dorothea looked eagerly at the yachts tied up there, wondering which of them was the Teasel. But they had stopped only to pick up the dinghy in which Mrs. Barrable had rowed up to the village that morning. They were off again, down a reach of the river that was almost like a street, with little old houses on one side and boats moored on the other.
“That’s the doctor’s house, isn’t it?” Mrs. Barrable asked the boatman. “The one we’re just coming to, with the thatched roof. I remember my brother pointing it out to me.”
“The one with a fish for a weather cock?” asked Dick.
“He’s a fisherman, Dr. Dudgeon,” said the boatman, with a chuckle. “Put up that old bream himself. No much time for sailin’, I s’pose, bein’ a doctor, but you often see him fishin’ off his garden end when the season come on. And Mr. Farland live in the house next to it, t’other side of the dyke.”
Mr. Farland’s house was further from the river, and Dick and Dorothea could see only the upper windows above the trees. But they saw his boat-house, and caught just a glimpse of the dyke between the two houses, a glint of water behind reeds and willows. There were more houses, some of them quite new, a windmill that had lost its sails, a ferry where a horse and cart were being ferried across, and an old inn close by the ferry with a boat or two moored beside it. Dorothea pointed to one of these, but Mrs. Barrable shook her head. That was the end of the village, and the launch put on speed once more. They passed a little church and a big house on the slope of a hill, with crowds of water-hens and black sheep feeding together by the waterside. Here, too, was a boat tied up in a dyke. But it was not that boat either.
“It can’t be much further,” said Dick.
“Mother said it was at Horning,” said Dorothea.
“Keep a good look-out,” said Mrs. Barrable.
And the river went on bending and curling and twisting, and every other moment they thought they would be seeing their boat.
They came in sight of her at last and did not know her, a neat, white yacht, moored against the bank, with an awning spread over cabin and well, as if she were all ready for the night.
“THE LAUNCH WAS SWINGING ROUND”
“Oh, look, look!” cried Dorothea. But it was not at the yacht that she was looking. Working up the river was an old black ship’s boat, with a stumpy little mast and a black flag at the masthead. Two small boys were rowing, each with one oar. A third, standing by the tiller, was looking through an enormous ancient telescope at something on the bank. The three small boys had bright coloured handkerchiefs round their heads and middles as turbans and belts. The launch was racing down the river to meet them, and in a moment or two, Dick and Dorothea were reading the name of the boat, Death and Glory, not very well painted, in big white letters, on her bows.
“You hardly expected to meet pirates on the Bure, did you?” said Mrs. Barrable.
The boatman laughed. The steersman of the Death and Glory waved his big telescope as the launch went by, and the boatman waved back. “Horning boys,” he said over his shoulder. “Boatbuilders’ sons, all three of ’em. Friends o’ Port and Starboard an’ young Tom Dudgeon.”
But what was happening? The noise of the engine had changed. The launch was swinging round in the river towards that moored yacht. The loose flaps of the yacht’s white awning stirred. A fat fawn pug clambered out on the counter and ran, barking, up and down the narrow side-deck.
“It’s William!” cried Dorothea.
“Hullo, William!” said Dick.
“Here we are,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Poor old William must be tired of taking care of the Teasel all by himself.”
“She’s ever so much bigger than she looks,” said Dick.
The parcels and suit-cases had all been put aboard, the little dinghy had been tied up astern, the launch had gone, and Dick, who had been standing rather unsteadily on the counter of the yacht, had climbed