Coot Club. Arthur Ransome

      “Used a sea-boot,” said Tom, without a moment’s stop in his work. “I’d got water into one already, when I was kicking her under.”

      “Good boy,” said Mrs. Barrable, and then, lightly, as if it was a question that did not really matter, “You are sailing most of the time, aren’t you?”

      “All the time,” said Tom, “except when I have to be at school.”

      “Could you make anything of sailing a boat as big as ours?”

      Tom looked up at the Teasel’s mast.

      “She isn’t bigger than the one the three of us sail when Uncle Frank has his holiday. Of course I couldn’t manage her all by myself.”

      “Three of you?”

      “Port and Starboard.”

      Dorothea’s eyes sparkled. Always those two seemed to be coming in.

      “She’ll do all right now,” said Tom, handing back the baler and tugging at his paddle which he had firmly wedged before sinking his ship. “And thank you very much. I know I ought not to have come aboard and borrowed that mud-weight. And thank you very much indeed for not minding. Some people would have been pretty fierce about it.”

      “You can’t sit on those wet thwarts,” said Mrs. Barrable.

      “I’ll stand up,” said Tom.

      “Isn’t she very crank?”

      “Not if you know her,” said Tom. “She’s really much steadier than some.” And, perhaps just a little because of the spectators watching from the Teasel, he stood in the stern of the old punt and drove her up the river, using his paddle as if he were a gondolier or one of the old-time marshmen who, they say, could keep their balance on a floating plank.

      Mrs. Barrable, Dick, Dorothea and William watched him out of sight.

      “That’s a very good boy,” said Mrs. Barrable at last.

      “Wouldn’t it have been awful if they’d caught him,” said Dorothea.

      “He deserved not to be caught,” said Mrs. Barrable.

      All the rest of the evening, they went on talking of Tom and the pirates, and the Hullabaloos, and the little racing boats they had seen in the afternoon. It was very late that night before Dick and Dorothea were stowed away in their bunks in the little fore-cabin, and Dick had tired of experimenting with the electric light above his head by switching it on and off, and Mrs. Barrable had taken out her letter to their mother, and was sitting at the folding table, finishing it up.

      “Do you think we’ll see him again?” asked Dick’s voice out of the darkness forrard.

      “I don’t see why not?” said Mrs. Barrable.

      “And Port and Starboard, too?” said Dorothea.

      “They seem to hang together,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Now, go to sleep, both of you.” And she crossed out a couple of sentences or so in her letter and added a few more. Then, listening to the quiet lapping of the water under the bows of the dinghy astern, she began drawing pictures as usual, and before she knew what she was doing, she had drawn a little sketch of the Teasel, with the awning gone, and her sails set, and a much larger crew than three aboard her, a little old woman at the tiller, Dick and Dorothea at the sheets, two girls on the foredeck, a boy at the masthead, and a row of three pirates, all with turbans and ferocious knives, sitting on the cabin roof.

CHAPTER VI

      PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE

      TOM PADDLED the Dreadnought up the river. Considering that she was a flat-bottomed, home-made punt, she really was fairly steady, but, on the whole, he thought it safer not to turn round and wave good-bye. She was very wet and rather slimy after being at the bottom of the river, and Tom was content to be able to keep his balance and to keep her going at the same time. He was still feeling the narrowness of his escape from the Hullabaloos. Things had certainly turned out much better than had seemed likely. How lucky that the Teasel had been moored there. How lucky, too, that the little old lady had taken his boarding of her yacht in the way she had. Why, she had played up against those Hullabaloos almost as if she had had a share herself in clearing them away from the coot’s nest. Of course, the old lady and those two children were foreigners, too, in a way, but not like the Hullabaloos. And her brother had had his head mended by Tom’s father. Anyway, it was very lucky that not even the pug had been on deck. There would not have been time for explanation. If he had not thought the yacht was empty he would never have dared to go aboard, but would have kept on down the river and, as sure as eggs were eggs, would have been caught at the next bend.

      The sun had gone down. The tide was on the point of turning, and up-river a calm green-and-golden glow filled the sky and was reflected on the scarcely moving water. A heron came flying downstream with long slow flaps of his great wings. Only twenty yards away he lifted easily over the tall reeds and settled with a noisy disturbance of twigs on the top of a tree in a little wood at the edge of the marshes. The heron had a little difficulty in balancing himself on the thin, swaying branch, and Tom, watching him, dark against the glowing sky, very nearly forgot that he, too, had an uncertain perch. Balancing like this was tiring, too, and, anyhow, Tom did not want to be standing up when he came to No. 7. Putting down his paddle and letting the Dreadnought drift, he slipped out of his jacket, folded it on the wet thwart, sat down on it and paddled away in good earnest. For a moment he pretended to himself that he could hear the Hullabaloos far away coming up the river, but he knew they were not, and no amount of pretence could make him send the old Dreadnought flying along as he had when it really was a question whether or no he would get away.

      He slowed down as he came near No. 7. One great advantage of paddling a punt is that you face the way you are going. Tom, as he paddled, was searching the side of the river opposite the little opening that the coots had chosen. He was looking for round black shadows stirring on that golden water under the reeds. He saw only the broad bulging ripple of a water-rat. No. At least the coots were no longer scuttering up and down in terror as he had seen them last. Quietly he edged the old punt over towards the other bank so as to be able to look into the opening as he passed it. There was an eddy here or nearly dead water, and Tom never lifted his paddle high enough to drip. He slid by as silently as a ghost. He knew exactly where to look into the shadows. There was the clump of reeds, and there at the base of them, among them, the raised platform of the nest. Was it deserted? Or not? Tom peered through the twilight. No. It was as if the centre of the nest was capped with a black dome, and on the dome he had just seen the white splash of a coot’s forehead. And what was that other shadow working along close under the bank? It was enough. Tom did not want to frighten them again. He paddled quietly on. One thing was all right, anyhow. The coots of No. 7 were at home once more.

      It was growing dark now. Nobody but Tom was moving on the river, and the only noise was the loud singing of the birds on both banks and over the marshes, whistling blackbirds, throaty thrushes, starlings copying first one and then the other, a snipe drumming overhead. Everything was all right with everybody. And then a pale barn owl swayed across the river like a great moth, and with her, furiously chattering, a little crowd of small birds, for whom the owl was nothing but an enemy. And suddenly into Tom’s head came a picture of the Margoletta as a hostile owl, mobbed by a lot of small birds, the Death and Glories and himself.

      Was that what had really been happening? It looked very like it if you chose to think of it that way. The Hullabaloos, horrid as they were, had only asked to be left alone. What would his father think of it? There were so few rules for the fortunate children of the river-side. They could do what they liked, more or less, so long as they managed to keep out of any trouble with the foreigners. That was the one thing that really mattered. A quarrel with George