“It was the only thing I could think of that would be heavy enough,” said Tom. “You see, I had to sink her.”
“Sink her?” Mrs. Barrable exclaimed. They all looked down into the brown water. “Do you mean to say your boat was here right under our feet all the time those people were talking?”
“She went down all right,” said Tom, “once I got her properly under.”
“But how will you get her up again?”
“She’ll come when the mud-weight’s lifted. And anyhow I hitched the painter to your rope. She’ll come all right. But I’m very sorry. You know I didn’t think there was anybody aboard. There was no pug on deck, and there usually is. And I knew I wouldn’t be doing any harm to the anchor. Just for half an hour till those Hullabaloos had gone by. There wasn’t time to do anything else. I could hear them already …”
“Hullabaloos?” said Mrs. Barrable. “What a very good name for them. But what had you done to them? And don’t you think they may be coming back any minute? It wouldn’t look well for them to find you here. Come inside and wait till we can be sure they are not turning round again. No, William. No! Friend! Friend! But what had you done to them? Whatever it was, I expect they deserved it….”
The noise of the Margoletta was now far away, but it could still be heard, and it would certainly be awkward if the Hullabaloos came back and found him where he was.
“I can stay hid in the reeds,” said Tom.
“But we want to hear about it,” said Mrs. Barrable, “and I don’t want to have to hide in the reeds while I listen. Much better come inside.”
Tom looked anxiously at the anchor rope that disappeared into the water at his feet. It was just as he had left it. The Dreadnought was all right down there at the bottom of the river. She could be taking no harm. He followed Mrs. Barrable down into the well.
“And now,” said Mrs. Barrable, when they were all in the well and under cover, including William, who was slowly changing his mind about Tom, “do tell us what it was all about. But, of course, you needn’t if you don’t want to.”
“It was birds,” said Tom.
“Herons?” broke in Dick, who had spent a lot of time watching one on the opposite bank during the afternoon.
“Coots,” said Tom. “You see, the birds are nesting now, and when people like that go and shove their boat on top of a nest anything may happen. And this is our particular coot. She’s got a white feather on one wing. We’ve been watching the nest from the very beginning. An early one. And the eggs are just on the very edge of hatching. And then those Hullabaloos moored clean across the opening where the nest is, and frightened the coots off. Something simply had to be done.”
“I can quite understand that,” said Mrs. Barrable. “But what was it you did?”
“Well, they wouldn’t move when they were asked,” said Tom.
“Who asked them?”
“The Bird Protection Society,” said Tom.
“But how did they come to know about it?”
“They were down this way inspecting, because I was up the river and Port and Starboard had to be racing. You must have seen them, I should think. Three of them, in an old black boat.”
“We saw them,” cried Dorothea delightedly.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Barrable. “The pirates … turbans, knives in their belts…. We all saw them.”
“Well,” said Tom, “you can’t expect them to be Bird Protectors all the time.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Barrable.
“They asked them to go, and they wouldn’t, and then, when they found it was no good being polite to Hullabaloos, they came and reported to the Coot Club, the rest of us, at Horning, I mean, and luckily my old punt was in the water. So I came down. They were making such an awful noise, they never heard me put their anchors aboard and push them off. The coots’ll be back by now if they haven’t been frightened into deserting altogether.”
“Um,” said Mrs. Barrable, “I’m glad I’m not moored on the top of somebody’s nest. I shouldn’t at all like to find myself drifting downstream.”
“But it wouldn’t ever happen to you,” said Tom. “You wouldn’t be beastly like they were if somebody came and explained that there were eggs just going to hatch.”
“I think it was splendid,” said Dorothea. “It’s just what Nancy would have done. Nancy’s a girl we know.”
“They sounded very unpleasant people,” said Mrs. Barrable.
But Tom was looking rather grim. Somehow it sounded awful, casting loose those Hullabaloos, when Mrs. Barrable said how much she would dislike finding herself adrift. Dorothea had said, “It was just what Nancy would have done.” But, whoever Nancy was, that made no difference to Tom, who knew that he had done the one forbidden thing and got mixed up with foreigners. Why, even now, sitting in this boat … But at that moment Mrs. Barrable made this, at least, seem better. It was almost as if she knew what he was thinking.
“You’re not altogether a stranger,” she said. “Aren’t you a son of Dr. Dudgeon?”
“Yes,” said Tom eagerly. “Do you know him?”
“In a way I do,” said Mrs. Barrable, “though I’ve never met him. He was very kind to my brother last summer when he was here sailing by himself and cracked his head coming out of the cabin in a hurry.”
Well, thought Tom, even that was better than nothing. If not a friend, at least the sister of a victim, not an absolute foreigner. All the same he was in a hurry to go. He answered a lot of questions from Dick about coots and their nests. He explained to Dorothea that it wasn’t the Titmouse that was at the bottom of the river, but only the old punt. And then he told Mrs. Barrable that he ought to go. They listened.
“They’ve gone right down the river,” said Mrs. Barrable, “or we’d be able to hear them whether their engine was running or not.”
Tom hurried along to the Teasel’s foredeck. Dick and Dorothea hurried after him. Already he was hauling up the Teasel’s mud-weight. Up it came, with the painter fast to the rope above it, and after it, with a tremendous stirring of mud, the Dreadnought herself rose slowly through the water, like a great shark. Up she came, and lay waterlogged, now one end of her and now the other lifting an inch above the surface.
“May I use your peak halyards?” asked Tom.
“Anything you like,” said Mrs. Barrable. “But keep the mud off the awning if you can.”
Tom, with Dick anxiously watching, unlaced the awning by the mast, freed the peak halyards, used the painter to make them fast to the Dreadnought’s thwarts, and delighted Dick and Dorothea by asking them to haul away, while he and Mrs. Barrable, who, after one moment’s hesitation, seemed not to mind getting her hands muddy, fended off from the deck of the Teasel.
“Steady,” said Tom. “Don’t lift her out of the water. She’s very old and the thwarts won’t bear it.”
Up came the punt, tilting over on one side. Water and mud poured out.
“Lower away,” called Tom, and the Dreadnought, no longer a submarine, floated with a few inches of freeboard.
Dick, his mind for once on the business in hand, saw what was wanted before anybody had time to tell him, hurried aft, hauled in the Teasel’s little dinghy, and was back in a moment with a baler.
“Good,” said Tom, who was already in the punt, thick brown water sloshing to and fro as he moved. He took the baler and settled down to scooping up the water and throwing