“Not they,” said Port. “We must think of something and think of it quick.”
“Where are the little brutes?” said Starboard. “They ought to have been here ages ago.”
They went ashore from the Titmouse, and back to the shed.
“There isn’t going to be much tea left for the Death and Glories if they don’t buck up,” said Port, looking deep into the jug as she filled the mugs again.
“It’s not much good having a meeting,” said Tom, “with no plans to propose.”
“Here they are,” said Port.
There was a splash of oars, a rustling of reeds, and the old black ship’s boat came pushing her way into the dyke. Under their gaudy handkerchiefs the faces of her crew looked much more worried than ever pirates’ faces ought to be.
“You’re jolly late,” said Starboard.
“Look here,” said Tom, “what’s the use of fixing up a Coot Club meeting if you three go off pirating and don’t come back till nearly dark?”
“No, but listen,” said Joe, at the tiller. “It ain’t pirating.”
“It’s B.P.S. business,” said one of the rowers, Bill. “It’s No. 7 …. Something got to be done.”
“What?”
“No. 7?”
“What’s happened?”
All thoughts of plans proposed or rejected were gone for the moment. No. 7 nest. The club’s own coot. The coot with the white feather.
“Everything was all right when we went by,” said Port.
“It’s since then,” said Joe. “One o’ them big motor-cruisers o’ Rodley’s go an’ moor right on top of her.”
Tom ran into the shed for their plan of the river, which hung from a nail on the wall. There was no need of it, for every one of the six members of the Coot Club knew exactly where No. 7 nest was to be found.
“What did you do?” Starboard asked.
“We let Pete do the talking,” said Joe. “As polite as he know how. ‘If you please’ and ‘Do you mind’ an’ all that.”
“Well?”
Pete, a small, black-haired boy, the owner of the enormous telescope, spoke up.
“I tell ’em there’s a coot’s nest with eggs nigh hatching,” he said. “I tell ’em the old coots dussen’t come back.”
“We see her scuttering about t’other side of the river,” said Bill, forgetting his handkerchief was a turban and taking it off and wiping his hot face with it. “She’ll never go back if that cruiser ain’t shifted.”
“And didn’t they go?” said Starboard.
“Just laugh. That’s what they do,” said Peter. “Say the river’s free to all, and the birds can go nest somewhere else, and then a woman stick her head out o’ the cabin and the rest of ’em go in.”
“What beasts!” said Port.
“I try again,” said Joe. “I knock on the side, and some of ’em come up, and I tell ’em ’twas a beastly shame, just when eggs is going to hatch.”
“And I tell ’em there’s a better place for mooring down the river,” said Bill.
“They tell us to clear out,” said Joe.
“And mind our own business,” put in Peter.
“I tell ’em ’twas our business,” said Joe. “I start telling ’em about the B.P.S.”
“They just slam off down below. Makin’ a noise in them cabins fit to wake the dead,” said Bill.
“Let’s all go down there,” said Starboard.
“I’ll deal with them,” said Tom. “The fewer of us the better. Much easier for one.” He looked at the Titmouse in her neat awning. “I’ll take the punt.”
“Can’t we come, too?” said Joe.
“We could skip across and tell Ginty we’re going to be late,” said Port.
“What about the meeting?” said Bill.
“No,” said Tom. “Meeting’s closed. Plan’s gone bust, anyhow. I’m going down the river at once.”
Already he had untied the old Dreadnought, pulled her paddle free and was working her out of the dyke.
“Look here,” he said. “If it’s bad as you say, I may have to do something pretty tough.”
“We did try talking to ’em,” said Bill.
“Well, if there’s a row about it, you’d better be out of it. All Coots off the river. Go and do some weeding for someone in the village. Slip along with them, Twins, and make sure someone sees them doing it.”
The Dreadnought slid out from the dyke into the open river. The last of the tide was running down, and Tom, with steady strokes of his paddle, sent the old home-made punt shooting down the middle of the stream to get all the help he could from the current.
The two elder Coots and the three small boys hurried to the edge of the doctor’s lawn.
“I wish we could all go,” said Joe, as they watched the punt vanish round the next bend of the river.
“We can’t,” said Starboard. “Those beasts have seen you three and talked to you, and you’ve just got to be somewhere else. Tom knows. He’s counting on you to be properly out of the way.”
“He’ll deal with them all right,” said Joe.
“I knew he would,” said Bill.
“Pitch your tea in quick,” said Port, and the pirates finished up the cold tea in the jug, and were given huge marmalade sandwiches to cram in as fast as possible. Meanwhile, there was the Titmouse with her new awning. They looked at her, and munched.
“Don’t see why we shouldn’t all rig up like that,” said Joe, and Tom would have been very pleased to hear him.
“Hurry up,” said Starboard.
All five of them embarked in the Death and Glory and pulled up-river to Horning Staithe, to make it as sure as possible that everyone should know that the three smaller Coots, at least, had had no hand in whatever Tom, away by himself down the river, should find he had to do.
CHAPTER IV
THE ONLY THING TO DO
WITH STEADY STROKES of his paddle, a long reach forward, a pull, and then a turn of the blade at the right moment, Tom drove the old Dreadnought down the river. Everything was going wrong. First the twins getting tied up for the last week of the holidays and now these wretched Hullabaloos mooring on the top of No. 7. If only it had been any other nest, he told himself, it would not have been quite so bad. Horrible anyway for any bird to be cut off from her nest by a thing like that. He remembered what he had just heard of a cruiser charging through a little fleet of sailing boats instead of keeping out of the way of them as by the rule of the road she ought to do. He remembered little Miss Millett in her houseboat with the china rocked off her shelves. He remembered the smell of burnt fat and the spattering grease as that cruiser roared past the Titmouse. And these people had refused to move even when Pete had explained to them what they were doing. Well, move they jolly well should. Even if he had to wait till dark. Tom found it somehow easier to forget his own disappointment in the thought