Coot Club

  Once more the Teasel swung round and a moment later was flying downstream again towards the bridge.

  “Phew,” said Tom. “Sorry. I ought to have thought of it before. We’ll want the anchors off their ropes. The anchors will be in the way for tying up.”

  “Don’t tumble off, Dick,” cried Dorothea. Dick was again sailor and nothing else, and had darted forward. It was an easy job, slipping the loop at the end of the rope clean over the anchor and then pulling it out through the ring on the shank. Dick was back in a moment with an anchor in his hand. Dorothea was unfastening the stern anchor in the same way.

  “Shove them anywhere,” said Tom.

  “Now,” said Mrs. Barrable quietly, watching the dolphin as they swept down towards it.

  “I’ll go forrard to make fast,” said Tom. “Could you steer? I’ll bring her round, and then you just edge her over and I’ll grab the dolphin and hang on.…”

  The Teasel swung round in the stream.

  “She’ll do it,” said Tom, and ran forward. “A wee bit nearer,” he called. There was the dolphin, huge, above him, a great framework of black piles, with a platform. He got hold of the platform, and with the other hand flung the warp round a pile. He caught the end of it again. Safe. “Hi! Look out. Fend her off.” The Teasel was swinging hard in against the piles. “All right now.” He made the warp fast and lowered the peak. In another moment he had the jib in his arms, brought it down on deck, pulled a tyer from his pocket, and made sure that it would not blow loose. And now, comfortably, without hurry, the mainsail was lowered, and Tom looked happily at the brown water still pouring past them, and at the bridge below them, and at a few small boys who were critically watching.

  “All right now,” said Tom. “We’ve just got to get the mast down ready to go through as soon as it’s dead low water.”

  “Let’s have the mast down now,” said the Admiral, “and then we’ll be ready when the tide’s ready for us, and we can have our tea while we’re waiting for it.”

  “Come on, Dick,” said Tom, “Acle over again.”

  “Nine minutes,” said the Admiral, watch in hand, when the mast, after coming slowly down, rested beside the boom.

  “It’s always a wee bit quicker getting it up,” said Tom, gathering all the shrouds and halyards with a length of string round them and the mast, so that they did not hang in festoons over the well.

  Tea was ready and the whole crew of the Teasel were enjoying it in the well, when they were hailed from the shore. They looked up to see a little old sailor man with a white beard standing on the bank.

  “Wanting a tow through the bridges?” he said. “They know me at the Yacht Station,” he added, but there was no need. Anybody could see in a moment that he was not one of the wreckers.

  The Admiral looked at Tom.

  Tom, just for a moment, thought how pleasant it would be to take a tow and have no more to worry about. And then he thought of Port and Starboard. He would like to be able to tell them that the Teasel had got through alone.

  “It’s just as you like,” said the Admiral.

  “No thanks,” said Tom. “We’re going to wait for slack water.”

  “You’ll be all right,” said the old man cheerfully. “Tide be setting up Breydon already.2 But you’ll be coming back another day. If you want a tug then to pull you through Yarmouth, you ring up the Yacht Station from Reedham or St. Olave’s and say you want the Come Along to meet you on Breydon. They’ll give me the word.”

  “The Come Along,” repeated Mrs. Barrable.

  “What a lovely name for a tug,” said Dorothea.

  “She’s a lovely tug,” said the old man. “Motor-boat, she is. Take you up no matter how the tide run. When she say come along, they have to come.”

  Mrs. Barrable scribbled down the name in the log of the Teasel.

  “You wait for slack water and you’ll come to no harm,” said the old man, and went off along the bank.

  “We’re in for it now,” said Tom, “but I know it’s easy enough if you don’t start down too soon.”

  “All right, Skipper,” said the Admiral. “We’ve done very well so far.”

  *

  All the earlier part of the voyage they had been sailing as hard as they could, because they were afraid the tide would turn against them before they came to Yarmouth. Now that they were there, it seemed as if the ebb would never stop. Tom, dreadfully wanting to get it over, felt as if they had been lying there a week, when Dick said, “The water’s stopped going down the piles,” and, almost at the same moment, Dorothea said, “That last crumb’s sailing very slowly.”

  “Let’s get along,” said Tom.

  “Quanting?” said Dick hopefully.

  “Not if we can help it,” said the Admiral. “We don’t want anybody o. b. down here, even if they can swim like porpoises.”

  “I’m going to tow down in Titmouse,” said Tom, “with the long rope. There’s only one thing, Admiral. We’ve got to tie up again at the mouth of the Bure, and all the dolphins are on the right-hand side. We’ll have to keep well over this side when we’re through the bottom bridge.” He pulled up the Titmouse, dropped into her, worked her forward and made fast the end of the long tow-rope that, so far, had never been used.

  TIED UP TO THE DOLPHIN

  “Hang on with the stern warp,” said Tom. Standing in the Titmouse he cast off the Teasel’s bow warp. There was still enough current to swing her slowly round.

  “Cast off stern warp!” They were doing jolly well, those two, but, at a moment like this he could not help wishing for the twins.

  “Everything’s loose,” said Dick.

  “Everything’s loose.…” Port and Starboard would hardly have put it like that. But Tom knew what Dick meant. Slowly, easily, he settled to his oars. The dolphin was slipping away astern. The Teasel tugged at her tow-rope, tugged half-heartedly once again, but presently came more willingly.

  “Is she steering all right?” Tom asked.

  “Beautifully,” said the Admiral.

  “There’s one bridge gone already,” said Dorothea.

  The Teasel slipped down between the high quays, and the little houses that seemed to rise out of the river mud. There was a dreadful smell of dead fish. Moored to ring-bolts in the walls of the houses and lying on the mud beneath them were little fishing boats, some with brown nets spread to dry. It was strange, coming from the lonely marsh lands up the river to hear the noises of a town, and the hooting of steamers talking to each other in the harbour. In a backyard close above the river, the Admiral, Dick and Dorothea, saw the figurehead of a sailing ship, a huge carved and painted figure of an old gentleman, looking out over clothes drying on a line, as long ago he had looked out over spirting foam and blue water while his ship drove southward in the Trades.

  “What’s his name?” asked Dorothea.

  “What’s his name?” called Mrs. Barrable. But the old gentleman and the ship called after him had long been forgotten, and a boy looking down over the wall told them he did not know.

  But Tom, steadily rowing in the Titmouse, had no eyes for all this. It had seemed to be nearly dead water up above the bridges, but the further he got the faster the stream was pouring out between the mud-banks. Had he, after all, made the mistake he had been warned against, and in spite of all that waiting, started down too soon? There could be no going back now. It would be all right if only he did not miss the dolphin when they came out from under the third bridge where the rivers meet at the top of Yarmouth Haven. The second bridge was gone. A motor-bus roared across the third close behind him. Now was the time. Keep close to the right bank. He edged nearer, and began to wonder if he had better make fast to the dolphin with his own painter or with the tow-rope itself. Better with the tow-rope if he could. The shadow of the bridge fell across him. He was through. He glanced over his shoulder. There was a steamer coming up out of the lower harbour. A schooner was moored against the quay on the left bank. There were the dolphins, black and
white, and beyond them open water, miles of it, and the long white railway bridge over Breydon, with the swing bridge in it open for the passing of the steamer. And the Admiral and Dick and Dorothea, looking at all these things, were steering gaily down the middle of the river.

  Tom yelled: “Starboard! Head her to starboard! This side!” Oh, if only the twins had been aboard.

  He pulled as hard as he could across the stream and towards the dolphins. There was one that would do if only he could get to it and make fast in time. Over his shoulder he saw the iron bar flecked with green weed, fixed upright on the pile for people to pass their warps round. But it was more than he could do with the Teasel heading straight downstream.

  “This side!” he shouted again. At last they understood. The Teasel headed after him towards the dolphin. The tow-rope slackened. Another stroke, another, and his hands were clutching at the slippery pile. “Go through, you beast!” he muttered to the spare end of the tow-rope as he pushed it in behind the iron bar. It was through at last. He freed the rope from the thwart of the Titmouse and hung on. The Teasel drifting down with the steam tautened it, stretched it, stopped and swung. A moment later he was alongside her bows, and had given the end of the rope to Dick to make fast. They were safe.

  “Well done, Tom,” said the Admiral as Tom came aboard and tied the little Titmouse to the Teasel’s counter. “Sorry about our steering.”

  “The steering was all right,” said Tom. “Only that last bit. I was afraid there wouldn’t be time to make sure of the dolphin. But it was all right. Come on, Dick, let’s have the mast up and get away.”

  The mast went slowly up, and the jib, and Tom and Dick and Dorothea were being very particular about the set of the mainsail. Tom wanted it exactly right for sailing up Breydon.

  “That man’s shouting at us,” said Dorothea.

  A sailor on the schooner away by the quay was giving them a friendly warning. “Ahoy there. Best stir yourselves. They’ll be closing the bridge.”

  “Cast off,” cried Tom, and Dick let go one end of the tow-rope, and began hauling in hand over hand on the other as it came slipping round the bar on the dolphin. The foredeck was all a clutter of tow-rope and halyards, but no matter.

  The Teasel was sailing.

  “Close-hauled,” called Tom to the Admiral. “We’ve got to tack up through the bridge.”

  “You’d better come and take her, Tom.”

  “You deal with these ropes, Dick. Sit on the roof when she goes about. But tidy up as well as you can.” Tom ran aft and jumped into the well.

  The Admiral seemed glad to let him have the tiller. Dorothea was anxiously watching Dick, who was busy on the foredeck, trying to coil down the ropes exactly as he had seen them coiled by the Coots.

  “The tide’ll take us through,” said Tom. “We’ve just got to keep her moving and head her in between the piers. And once we’re through and round the corner we’ll have a free wind up Breydon.”

  “They seem in a bit of a hurry on the bridge,” said the Admiral. High on the bridge, someone was leaning from a signal cabin and waving.

  “Ready about!” sang out Tom. “Sit down and hang on, Dick!” The Teasel had gone almost as far as the opposite shore of the Yare. She swung round now on the port tack, but not for long. “Ready about!” Tom sang out again. Again Dick sat down on the end of the cabin roof and took a firm grip of the mast.

  “She’ll do it now,” said Tom, and headed in between the piers. Railway men up on the bridge looked down on the little Teasel. The crew of the Teasel looked up at great iron girders above them on either side. The sails flapped. Tom was heading straight into the wind, counting on the tide to carry him through. Another ten yards. Another five. There was the clang of a changing signal, and the noise of levers slipping into place. They were through and already the huge swinging span of the bridge was closing astern of them. Presently a train roared across.

  Dick finished tidying up the foredeck and joined the others in the well. William barked at the train. Tom gave a little flourish with his hand, without really meaning to do anything of the sort. “We’ve done it,” he said. “Got through Yarmouth, anyway.”

  “Chocolate all round,” said the Admiral. “We’ve done it without letting the Teasel get a single scratch.”

  “I do wish Port and Starboard were here to see,” said Dorothea.

  “They’ll be just finishing their race,” said the Admiral.

  1 Parrels are wooden beads threaded on a loose string between the jaws of the gaff. Until this string is untied the gaff is held to the mast.

  2 The flood tide begins to run up the Yare while the ebb is still pouring out of the Bure.

  CHAPTER XIX

  SIR GARNET OBLIGES FRIENDS

  THE twins had missed their ship, but what of that? They were aboard the fastest wherry on the river, and would catch the Teasel at Stokesby if they did not catch her before. They were extremely cheerful. Everything had been saved at the very last minute, and after all, they too would share in the voyage to the south, for which they had been training the Admiral’s eager crew.

  They looked at the windows of the doctor’s house as the wherry slipped past it. “Our baby” had not yet been moved into the garden. They caught a glimpse of somebody in a white apron in one of the upper rooms, but nobody looked out. Dr. Dudgeon’s golden bream, high above the brown reed-thatching, was still swimming merrily north-west.

  “Couldn’t have a better wind,” said Starboard.

  “We’ll need it,” said Jim Wooddall shortly. He could not forgive old Simon for dawdling ashore and making him late in getting away.

  Only the upper windows of their own house showed above the willows. But at the edge of the river, under the low boathouse roof, they could see the Flash with lowered mast, waiting all unconscious that she had been deserted by her skipper and her crew.

  “Poor old Flash,” said Starboard. “Hullo! Ginty’s waving at us.”

  “Only shaking out a duster,” said Port. “Of course she isn’t waving. If she saw us going down the river on a wherry she’d be throwing fifteen different kinds of fit.”

  They were relieved to see the duster disappear.

  “She’ll have spring-cleaned the whole house by the time we come back.”

  And then Jim Wooddall was asking them about the races, and they told him how it was that Flash was out of them, and that as soon as Mr. Farland came back they were going to challenge the winner. Grizzled Skipper, Jim Wooddall thought, was the likeliest of the lot, “And I’d like to see her an’ Flash fight it out,” he said. And then they talked of sugarbeet, that was keeping wherries busy at one time of the year, going round to Cantley on the Norwich River, and of other cargoes, such as grain, of which there was less than ever, and of the bungalows that were sent down by water all ready-made and needing only to be set up (“Card houses, I call ’em”) and cargoes of planks for quay-heading and cut logs for piles. And all the time they were talking, Port and Starboard were looking eagerly down each reach of the river as it opened before them, until, at last, Jim Wooddall noticed it and laughed.

  “He’ve a long start of us, Tom have.”

  Old Simon was steadily working away, making beautiful fiat coils of the warps on the top of Sir Garnet’s closed hatches. He came aft now, and went into the little cabin, and came out with a bucket of potatoes and a saucepan half full of water.

  “Better give him a hand,” said Jim Wooddall. “Workin’ yer passage, you are.” And old Simon sitting on the hatch with the bucket between his knees made them laugh by opening an enormous clasp knife and offering it to Starboard.

  But they had knives of their own, of a handier size, and were soon hard at work, though old Simon peeled four potatoes to every one of theirs, and did not think much of them as cooks.

  “Look ye here, Miss Bess,” he said, “if you takes the topsides off that thick, what sort of a spud’ll ye have left for puttin’ in the pan?”

  They were close to the mouth of
the Ant when they heard and saw the Margoletta. She was coming up the river against the tide, and the wherry with wind and tide to help her was sweeping down. They were close to each other when the Margoletta swung round and into the Fleet Dyke, where, only yesterday, the Teasel had been.

  “Lookin’ for him in South Walsham, likely,” said Jim Wooddall with a grin.

  The assistant cooks of Sir Garnet stared at him.

  “But how do you know about it?” said Starboard.

  “Easy,” said Jim Wooddall, puffing at his pipe. “Them cruisers talk enough. There’s only one boy down Horning way what have a black punt and paddle her from the stern. Tom Dudgeon and his old Dreadnought. Tom say nothin’ about it to me that day he come to Wroxham, and there was me, readin’ that notice over his head. And after he go, up come that lot in Margoletta asking for a boy in a sail-boat.… Tom Dudgeon and his Titmouse for certain sure. And you missies know somethin’ about how they didn’t cotch him that day.” And he grinned again.

  “Look here, Jim,” said Port. “Nobody but George Owdon would have told them Tom was gone up the river in a sailing boat. And the night before last they came up to Potter Heigham, and we think George must have told them Tom was gone up the Thurne.”

  “They as good as said someone tell ’em, that day Tom come to Wroxham.”

  “But what we don’t understand is this,” said Starboard. “If George wants them to catch Tom, why doesn’t he send them straight to Doctor Dudgeon?”

  “Simple,” said Jim Wooddall. “Fare to me that George he want ’em to cotch young Tom, but he nat’rally don’t want to be in it hisself. So he send ’em where he think they can’t fail for to meet him. If they meet young Tom and know him, how be George Owdon to blame? But if them cruisers go to the doctor and ask for his son, why, how do they know the name of a boy they seen once in their life? Somebody must ’a told ’em. And everybody in Horning’d know who ’twas.”