If George had been any other kind of larger boy, Tom might have asked his advice and help. But he knew better than that. George might be Norfolk, like himself, but he was in his way more dangerous even than the cruiser. George was an enemy. He had much more pocket-money than any of the Coots but was known to make more still by taking the eggs of rare birds and selling them to a man in Norwich. He would be ready to go and smash the nest on purpose if he guessed that Tom and his Bird Protection Society were particularly interested. So Tom paddled steadily on.
“You’re in a hurry, young Tom.”
Tom, by instinct, paddled rather less fast.
“Not particularly,” he said.
“What’s the secret this time?” jeered George Owdon.
Tom did not answer. He was soon round the bend below the inn and out of sight from the Ferry. He could not tell what was going to happen, but he wished George Owdon had not been there.
He paddled faster again, and presently heard a strange jumble of noise from farther down the river. Faint at first, two tunes quietly quarrelling with each other, it grew louder as he came nearer until at last it seemed that the two tunes were having a fight at the top of their voices.
Suddenly he knew that all this noise was coming from one boat, a big motor-cruiser, that same Margoletta that had upset his cooking for him in the Titmouse. So that was the enemy. There it was (Tom could not think of a thing like that as “she”) moored right across the mouth of the little bay in which the coot with the white feather had built her nest. A narrow drain opened out here into the river. There were reeds in the entry, and among these reeds, just sheltered from the stream, was No. 7. Members of the Coot Club had watched every stage of the building. The Death and Glories had found it almost as soon as the coots had begun to lay one bit of pale dead reed upon another. That was a long time ago now, in term-time, when Port and Starboard were away at school, and Tom could get on the river only at week-ends. Joe, Bill and Pete had each in turn played truant in order to visit it. There had been those days of great rains and Tom had feared that the rising river would have drowned the nest or even swept it away. But the coots had not let the floods disturb them. They had simply added to their nest, and, when the water had fallen again he had come down the river just as he was coming now, to find the coot with the white feather sitting on her eggs on the top of a broad, high, round platform made of woven reeds.
GEORGE OWDON WAS LOOKING DOWN AT HIM
And now was all that to go for nothing? The bows of the big cruiser were moored to the bank above the opening. The stern was moored to the bank below it. “So that the lazy brutes can go whichever way they like on shore without having to use their dinghy,” said Tom to himself. But he could hardly hear himself speak for noise. There was nobody to be seen on the deck of the Margoletta. All the Hullabaloos were down below in the two cabins, and in one cabin there was a wireless set and a loud speaker, and in the other they were working a gramophone.
Tom let his Dreadnought drift down with the stream, close by the Margoletta. Should he or should he not try to persuade those Hullabaloos to move? If one of them had been looking out of a porthole he might have had a try. Not that he thought for a moment that persuading would be much good with people who on a quiet spring evening could shut themselves up in their cabins with a noise like that. And anyway the Death and Glories had tried it and had told them about the coots.
The coots made up his mind for him. There they were, desperately swimming up and down under the bank opposite the little bay that the cruiser had closed to them. Up and down they swam, giving small sharp cries of distress quite unlike their usual sturdy honk. They hardly seemed to know what to do, sometimes taking short flights upstream, spattering the water as they rose, flopping into it again, and swimming down. And Tom knew just why they were so upset. Close behind the cruiser and the dreadful deafening noise was the nest that they had built against the floods, and the eggs that must be close on hatching. Something had to be done at once. How long had the coots been kept from their eggs already? It was no use trying to talk to those Hullabaloos. If he did it would only put them on their guard and make things much more difficult.
Tom paddled quietly in to the bank below the Margoletta, landed, tied the Dreadnought to a bunch of reeds, and then crept along the bank until he came to the stern mooring rope of the cruiser. He stopped and listened. Those two tunes went on with the battle, each trying to drown the other. He heard loud, unreal laughter. Bending low, Tom pulled up the rond-anchor,* coiled its rope as carefully as if it were his own, and laid anchor and coiled rope silently on the after-deck. A single glance told him that the nest and the eggs were still there. They might so easily have been smashed during the cruiser’s mooring.
So far, so good. Bent double, he hurried back along the bank and, in a moment, was afloat in the Dreadnought. There was no sign that anybody in the Margoletta suspected that anything was happening. He paddled upstream past the cruiser and landed again. Creeping down along the bank he pulled up the bow anchor, coiled its rope, and laid it on the foredeck. There was such a noise going on in both cabins that he need not have been so careful. Then he leant lightly against the Margoletta’s bows. Was she going to move, or would the stream itself keep her where she was? She stirred. She was moving. The stream was pushing its way between her and the bank. In a moment Tom was back in the Dreadnought, pushed off and with a hard quick stroke or two set himself moving downstream, away from Horning and home and the Coot Club’s private stronghold in the dyke below his father’s house.
He had made up his mind about that before ever he had touched the Margoletta’s anchors. Supposing the Hullabaloos should see him going upstream they would be sure to think of the Death and Glories who had gone that way after asking them to move. That would never do. He must lead them downstream instead. With luck he would be round the bend and away before they saw him. He would leave the Dreadnought somewhere down the river, and slip back to Horning by road. Lucky it was that it wasn’t the Titmouse he had taken.
He paddled swiftly and silently downstream. The Margoletta was adrift and moving. He could see into the little bay. He glanced across at the troubled coots. Another few minutes and they would be back at the nest. Unless, of course, they had been kept away too long already. He passed the cruiser and settled down to hard paddling. What a row those Hullabaloos were making. They still did not know they were adrift. And then, just as he reached the turn of the river below them, he heard an angry yell, and, looking back over his shoulder, saw the Margoletta out in mid-stream, drifting down broadside on, and on the open deck between the two cabins a man pointing at him and shouting, and, worse, watching him through fieldglasses.
The thing was done now, and the hunt was up. Tom wished he had oars with outriggers in the Dreadnought, to drive her along quicker than he could with his single home-made paddle. He forced her along with tremendous jerks, using all the strength in his body. He had been laughed at for making that paddle so strong, but he was glad of it now. Already he was out of sight of the Margoletta, but she would be round the bend in a moment as soon as they got their engine started, and in this next reach there was nowhere to hide. He must go on and on, to make them think that the boy who cast them loose had nothing to do with Horning, but had come from somewhere down the river. If only a nice bundle of weeds would wrap itself round their propeller. But it was too early in the year to have much hope of that. Yes, there it was. He heard the roar of the engine. They were after him. And then the roar stopped suddenly and there were two or three loud separate pops. Engine trouble. Good! Oh, good! He might even get right down to the dyke by Horning Hall Farm, where he had friends and could hide the old Dreadnought and know she would come to no harm.