“What?”
“Perhaps they want people to think it isn’t them.”
“What can we do?”
“Don’t talk.”
The noise came nearer and nearer, and suddenly lessened. An engine had been throttled down. Whatever it was, it did not want to rouse all Potter Heigham in the dark. Tom and Dick lay, silent. The awning above their heads paled for a moment as the beam of a searchlight swept across it. Tom held his breath. If they had spotted him that light would come again. It did not. Yet he could hear the cruiser close at hand. The noise of the engine changed again. Stopping. Reversing. Swinging round. Waves from the wash lifted the little Titmouse and slapped up under the counter of the Teasel. Were any of the others awake? At any moment William might start telling those people that they had no right to be about. The cruiser was going ahead again. No. Again they heard her put into reverse. There was a bump against the wooden quay-heading. Someone landed heavily on the grass. Orders were being given in a low voice.
For a long time Tom and Dick listened. If it was indeed the Hullabaloos, they had tied up somewhere very near them. There was a faint murmur of talk, but not louder than might have come from any other boat. There was not a sound from the Teasel. The Admiral, the twins, Dorothea and William were all tired out and solidly asleep.
Time went on and on. The murmur ceased. There was no noise at all but the gentle tap tap of a rope against the Teasel’s mast, and the quiet lapping of the water against the quays on the other side of the river. The inn had closed long before and it had been an hour at least since the last motor car had crossed the bridge.
A breath of cold air touched Dick’s face. He woke suddenly to find that Tom was no longer lying beside him, but had got up and turned back a flap of the awning.
“Tom.”
“Keep quiet.”
“What are you doing?”
“Going to see if it’s them or not.”
Dick felt the Titmouse sway as Tom leaned out and took hold of the wooden piling along the edge of the staithe. He felt her lurch as Tom scrambled silently ashore. He fumbled for his spectacles, found them, and put them on. There wasn’t much go left in that torch of his, but it might come in useful. He wriggled himself out from under the thwart. Whatever happened he must make no noise. Ouch! That was his hand between the Titmouse and the quay. Everything was pitch black out there. He scraped a shin on the gunwale, and bumped a knee on the top of a pile, but, somehow, found himself crawling in wet grass. He waited a moment. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dark. He could see dimly the shape of the Teasel covered with her awning and not so dark as the darkness all about her. He could see the broken line made against the sky by the roofs of bungalows and boathouses. And there, just beyond the Teasel, was a huge mass, and something pale creeping towards it in the grass. Dick stood up and the next moment stumbled over a mooring rope.
There was a long silence.
Dick lay still, and so did that other creeping thing that was now close to the bows of the Teasel. In that strange moment, Dick heard the boom of a bittern far away over the marshes, but hardly noticed it. He felt his way forward, found the next mooring rope by hand instead of by tripping over it, and, at last, was close beside Tom, looking up at the dim high wall of a big cruiser’s stern.
Tom whispered, “I can’t read the name.”
Dick said nothing, but found Tom’s hand and pressed his torch into it.
Tom pointed the torch down towards the black water at their feet, covering the bulb with his hand so that when he switched it on, it gave out nothing but a faint red glow. He let a little more light out between his fingers. That was no good. He held the torch closer against the dark stern of the cruiser and lifted it inch by inch, until it showed them the name. One half second was enough to let them know the worst –
“MARGOLETTA”
And there was Tom, as near to the cruiser and its sleeping Hullabaloos as he had been on the evening when for the sake of No. 7 he had turned himself into a hunted creature.
There was the Margoletta within a few yards of the Teasel’s bows. Their mooring warps crossed each other. There was hardly room between them for the Margoletta’s dinghy. Aboard the Teasel, everybody was asleep. It was the same aboard the Margoletta. Even Hullabaloos must sleep sometimes, and there they slept while Tom and Dick crept home along the bank and shut themselves in once more under the Titmouse’s awning.
“But what are you going to do?” whispered Dick.
Tom was thinking.
“There’s only one thing to be done,” he said at last. “But we’ve got to do it without waking the others.… If William wakes he’ll wake everybody.… And it’s no good trying to do it until it’s light enough to see.”
And so, keeping awake as best they could, Tom and Dick waited for the dawn. In the end, of course, they slept, and woke in panic remembering who were their neighbours. Silently they stowed the Titmouse’s awning, unstepped her mast and made her a dinghy once more. It was already light, but everybody slept about them. The little wooden houses slept, and the boat-yards, and the moored yachts, and the great threatening bulk of the Margoletta. Only the morning chorus of birds sang as if impatient to stir the sleepers.
“They’ll go and wake William,” whispered Dick. It was not at all the way in which he usually thought of the songs of the birds.
IT WAS THE MARGOLETTA
The worst moment was when Tom had to unlace a bit of the Teasel’s awning, so as to lift a leg of its framework and get the tiller amidships. Then, in spite of all his care, he heard someone stir in the cabin. But there was no barking.
“Look here, Dick,” he whispered. “You never have steered with a foot. But it’s quite easy. You’ve got to steer standing on the counter, so as to see over the top of the awning.”
Silently the mooring ropes were taken aboard. Silently Tom pulled the Titmouse out into the river. The tow-rope tightened. The Teasel was moving. Dick, steadying himself with a hand on the boom, steered as well as he was able.
“’Sh! ’Sh!” he whispered, as the flap of the awning was flung back, and Dorothea, like Dick, in pyjamas, looked sleepily out in time to read the dreaded name on the sleeping cruiser’s bows, as the Teasel slipped downstream, only a yard or two away.
CHAPTER XV
PORT AND STARBOARD SAY GOOD-BYE
PORT and Starboard, sleeping in the fore-cabin of the Teasel, missed the excitements of the night. All was over, and Tom and Dick had moored the Teasel at a staithe three-quarters of a mile down the river, when Port, hearing their voices, leaned across from her bunk, tugged at Starboard’s blankets and began, in the best Ginty manner, “Time for the bairrns to be stirrin’. It’s a braw an’ bonny mornin’.… What? … What’s happened? Where are we?” She had caught sight through a port-hole of a bungalow that had certainly not been there the night before.
“’Sh!” whispered Dorothea. “Don’t wake the Admiral. She’s been awake and gone to sleep again, and so’s William.”
She squeezed through into the little fore-cabin and told them how the Margoletta had come up in the dark and moored just below them, almost touching the Teasel’s bow, and how Tom and Dick had slipped out early, and, towing and steering, had taken the Teasel into safety, out of sight and hearing of the enemy.
“But that was in a dream,” said Port. “I dreamt I heard their beastly engine.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Starboard.
“It wasn’t a dream,” said Dorothea. “I saw the Margoletta myself. And the Admiral says we’re all to get to sleep again. She and William are asleep already.”
But nobody could sleep for very long. Even Tom and Dick, who had lain awake half the night, could not settle down. It did not seem worth while to rig the Titmouse’s awning all over again, and, Tom in his sleeping-bag and Dick in his blankets in the bottom of the open boat, they dozed off only to be waked again, by a gentle bump against the staithe, or by the sun which had begun to find its way wherever it was least wanted. The twin
s could not help whispering. Dorothea could not help hearing them, and, herself, was lying awake trying how best to fit the story of that night into the framework of “The Outlaw of the Broads”. In the end, even the Admiral gave up hope of sleep, and, long before the usual time, was about in the well, stirring the Primus stove to action.
Dorothea was the next to be ready. She was in the cabin getting into her clothes, and at the same time looking at the map spread on the cabin table, to see what ways of escape were open to the outlaw in case the Margoletta came down the river in pursuit of him.
“Do you know what this place is called?” she said suddenly, and took the map out of the cabin with her to show it to the Admiral.
“Why so it is,” said Mrs. Barrable. “There, William, you never knew you were going to a place called Pug Street, did you? You can’t be the first of the hard-working and successful pugs. There must have been another to have a street called after him.”
There was a tremendous noise of splashing astern, where. Tom and Dick were doing their washing in a tin baler.
“Your turn for the wash-basin,” Starboard was saying in the fore-cabin.
Presently everybody was ready to begin the day, even those who were now beginning it a second time.
“Somebody take pug for a walk along his street,” said the Admiral, “and see if it’s too early to get milk. There must be a farm over there.”
“Come on, pug,” said Dorothea. “It’s more like a lane than a street, but anyhow, let’s go and have a look at it.”
“Come on,” said Tom. “Hear that yellow-hammer?”
“Let’s try to see him,” said Dick.
Mrs. Barrable handed out the milk can, and off they went past the old barn and along the narrow green lane that leads to Repps.
By the time they came back, after stopping to watch the yellow-hammer flitting through the branches of the pollarded willows, so that Dick could fairly add its name to the list in his notebook, they found breakfast waiting in the cabin, the awning stowed, the cover taken off the mainsail, and Port and Starboard swilling down the decks.
“Well,” said the Admiral, when they had crowded into their places on the bunks at either side of the cabin table and she was passing Tom his mug. “Are you going to make a habit of casting off people’s moorings without telling them anything about it? And we weren’t moored over a coot’s nest.”
“It was the only thing to do,” said Tom.
“Like last time,” said the Admiral, laughing at him.
“But he didn’t send you adrift,” said Dick. “He just towed you into a safe place.”
“I do think you might have waked us,” said Starboard.
“I didn’t want to wake anybody,” said Tom. “They were almost touching us. One bark from William and we’d have been done.”
“Let’s slip back along the bank and have a look at them,” said Port.
“What for?” said Tom, who wanted never to see them again. “Let’s get on. They may wake any minute and come charging down the river.”
“I wonder,” said the Admiral. “Now, supposing somebody happened to know we’d gone up through Potter Heigham, and supposing the somebody told your Hullabaloos, they may very well have to come along just to wait at the bridge and make sure of Tom when he came back.”
“Look here,” said Starboard. “It may really have been George Owdon Dorothea saw on that bicycle.”
“If the twins hadn’t been in such a hurry to get back, we’d have been coming down this morning,” said Tom. “I’d have come rowing out from under the bridge towing the Teasel. They couldn’t have helped seeing me, and I wouldn’t have had a chance of getting away.”
“And now,” said the Admiral, “they’ll be sitting there all day, watching the bridge and waiting for the criminal to come through.”
That was a very pleasant thought and lent an extra relish to the eggs and bacon.
*
It was turning out another fine spring day. The south-easterly wind was freshening up again. “Just the wind,” Starboard said, “to take us back to Horning. And we needn’t be there till afternoon.” Now that they were no longer worried about being held up by a calm, the twins wanted to make the very most of the Teasel’s last day as a training ship. Tomorrow she would be sailing south without them, and they were determined that she should sail with as good a crew as could be trained in the time. “Train them?” Port had said. “We’re simply going to cram them.” And on this last day, the moment breakfast was done with, they got Dorothea so muddled with questions first from one side and then from the other about the rule of the road that, when asked what she would do if, running before the wind, she met two boats beating on opposite tacks, she said, “I should ask the captain,” which the Admiral said was a very good answer indeed. The twins simply had to keep themselves busy, so as not to feel too sad to think that they were not coming too, to help in sailing the Teasel in the big rivers of the south. It could not be helped. Their A.P. was counting on them. But the good wind, and the brisk spring day made staying at home and sleeping in beds instead of in bunks a very gloomy prospect.
There was no doubt that the Teasel, as a training ship, had been a great success. Neither Dick nor Dorothea hesitated for a moment now when asked to touch their port cheeks or starboard shoulders, though the mischievous Port had them both muddled when suddenly she ordered them: “Now, quick; no waiting! Touch your starboard noses.” They knew the names of all the ropes and could find the right one if not too desperately hurried. They had begun in Ranworth learning to handle the little sail of the Titmouse. They had gone on to dealing with the big mainsail of the Teasel. They had hauled on rope after rope in the actual business of sailing. They had coiled down halyards again and again, trying to learn the trick of getting the same length of rope into each round of a coil. Already they had been seen comparing hands. “What are you doing?” the Admiral asked. “Only wishing Captain Nancy and the others could see our hands,” said Dorothea. “They are so beautifully horny.”
On this last day of their training, Tom and the twins made Dick and Dorothea sail the Teasel almost by themselves, of course, after lending weight on halyards to get the sails properly set. They slipped away from Pug Street and left the last of the Potter Heigham bungalows, and reached past the Womack Entry, and beat down to Thurne Mouth, and ran before the wind when they turned by the signpost into the Bure, without a hand on the tiller other than the beautifully horny ones, while the Coots stood by, giving a word of advice sometimes, and easing out or hauling in the mainsheet. Nothing went wrong, except that just once a pair of reed buntings very nearly made Dick steer into the bank.
When they came to the entrance to the Fleet Dyke it seemed too good a chance of going into South Walsham to be missed, as the wind would let them reach in and out again without tacking. So they sailed down the narrow dyke into that beautiful little broad, and through the pass between the trees into the inner broad where they very nearly got stuck on a shallow. They anchored in the outer broad, not tying up to the staithe, but lowering the mud-weight that had last been used to sink Tom’s Dreadnought. Then, while Dorothea and the Admiral were making ready a dinner (steak and kidney pie again, and a lot of fruit tartlets bought in Potter Heigham), the others went sailing in the disguised Titmouse, and found a crested grebe on her nest in a clump of reeds not thirty yards from the staithe. They sailed silently by, and she let them come to within a few yards before she quickly covered her eggs with some rotted reeds and slipped off into the water. She was back again on the nest before they had gone far, and, after they had had dinner, when they brought Dorothea to see her, she let them sail close by without stirring from her nest, sitting with neck and crest erect, following them with her eyes and moving nothing but her head.
After that they set sail in the Teasel once more, and sailed down the Fleet Dyke into the river again. Dick, for the first time in his life, went up the mast, using the mast-hoops as footholds, to look out from the masthead (“It wo
uld never do,” said Dorothea, “to sail out and meet them in the river before Tom had time to hide in the cabin”). But there were no signs of the Margoletta, and Dick, under orders from the Admiral, came down. Dorothea herself, though proud to see him up there, was glad when he was safely on the deck. In the main river they had a grand wind to help them, and they sailed home at a great pace, past Ant Mouth, and Horning Hall Farm, and the Teasel’s old moorings and the entry to Ranworth where the outlaw had laid low. They swept by too fast to see much of No. 7, but they all saw the coot with the white feather, and Dick, who had the glasses, thought he could see the sooty young ones in the nest. As soon as they passed the Ferry, Tom hauled the Titmouse close up to the counter.
“I can’t take her up to the staithe,” he said. “Anybody who knows her would be sure to see her name’s been painted out. I’ll hide her in our dyke, and come along at once.”
The wind was already not so strong, and Tom slipped easily down into her, and the Teasel sailed on up the village without a dinghy towing astern of her while the disguised Titmouse with the rope fender round her and Mrs. Barrable’s oil paint over the letters on her transom, disappeared behind the reeds, and was tied up once more beside the ancient Dreadnought.
“Well, and how did you get on?” asked his mother, when Tom ran in just to have a look at our baby before running up the lane to join the others at the staithe. “I hear dreadful stories about you and the twins up the river.”
“Oh, that was all right,” said Tom, “but we had a narrow squeak last night. Those people moored next door to us at Potter in the dark, but we got away before they woke this morning.”
“Trust you,” said his mother. “But what about your crew? Do you think you and Mrs. Barrable will really be able to sail her yacht with only those two children to help?”
“They’re coming on like anything,” said Tom. “We’ll manage all right. But I wish the twins were coming too.”