Coot Club. Arthur Ransome

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      The twins had never yet seen the Titmouse with her awning up, for the awning had only yesterday been given its finishing touches by old Jonas the sailmaker, and Tom had sailed away above Wroxham Bridge for the night, partly because he had laughed so often at the struggles of visitors with the awnings of the hired yachts that he did not want even the twins to be present when he was experimenting for the first time with his own. Now, of course, he was bursting to show it them. He was sure that once they saw how well it worked they would manage something of the sort for their own rowing boat. Then anything would be possible, and they could spend the last weeks of the holidays in going for a real voyage. But it was no good having the awning up with the bottom-boards still so greasy that if the twins were to sit on them there would only be trouble with Mrs. McGinty later on. And if they were to see just how good those lockers were, he must manage to fix a door on at least one of them.

      He began by unloading the Titmouse, bringing rope and blocks and paint and screws and hinges into the shed. Then he brought in the little oil-stove that he had got from a boy at school in exchange for a pair of rabbits that were really not well fitted for voyaging in a small boat. He filled a kettle at a tap in the back kitchen, brought it round to the shed and put it on the oil-stove to boil. Then he took one of the locker doors, lying unfinished on the bench, and set to work chiselling out beds for a pair of hinges and making the holes for the screws, listening as he worked for the voices of the twins coming down the river.

      Presently he heard them. Well, he had known he could not get much done before they came. One door, and that not fixed.

      “Now then. Hop out, you two, and give her a push off. I’ll put her to bed.” That was Uncle Frank (Mr. Farland), who must for a moment have brought the Flash alongside the foot of the doctor’s lawn.

      “All right now?”

      “All right.”

      “Push her off then. And don’t be late for supper. Mrs. McGinty’ll be asking what I’ve done with you as it is.”

      “Eh, mon, dinna tell me ye’ve droon’t the puir wee bairrns.” That was Port’s voice, talking Ginty language.

      “Tell her we won’t be late. Macaroni cheese tonight. Specially for you, A.P.” That was Starboard talking to her Aged Parent.

      “Tell her the bairrns’ll be hame in a bittock.” That was Port again.

      “I’ll tell her to lock you both out,” laughed Mr. Farland.

      Tom heard the running footsteps of the twins, and, in another moment the two of them were at the door of the shed.

      “Hullo, Tom!”

      “Hullo! Who won?”

      “We were second,” said Starboard, “but it wasn’t Daddy’s fault. We had to go about and give them room just as we were getting level.”

      “What about No. 7? Hatched yet?”

      “Still sitting. At least I think so. She was when we went down. Coming up we were in the thick of things just there and we’d passed her before I could see.”

      No. 7 was for two reasons the nest that mattered most of all those that the Coot Club had under its care. It belonged to a pair of coots, one of which was distinguished from all other coots by having a white feather on its wing in such a place that it could be seen from right across the river. Coots are common enough on the Norfolk Broads, but coots with white feathers where there ought to be none are not common at all, and ever since it had first been seen, this particular coot had been counted the club’s sacred bird. Then, too, it had nested unusually early. It had begun sitting on its eggs long before any other coot on the reaches that the Coot Club (when not busy with something else) patrolled. Any day now its chicks might hatch out, and every member of the Coot Club was looking forward to seeing the sacred coot as the successful mother of a family, and to putting down the date of the hatching against nest No. 7 on the map they had made of their reaches of the river.

      “The Death and Glories’ll have seen all right,” said Port. “They’ve been on patrol down there.”

      “They do know there’s a meeting, don’t they?” said Tom. “It’s no good having one for plans with only half the club.”

      “We told them, anyhow,” said Starboard. “They ought to be here by now. They were well past Ranworth when we passed them last.”

      “We won’t wait tea for them,” said Tom. “And it’s pretty late already. Mother says we can have it here. You just jig round to the kitchen….”

      “What about the Coot Club mugs?”

      “I took one in Titmouse,” said Tom. “The others are all here.”

      “Pretty clean, too,” said Port, looking into them as she unhooked them from a row of nails. “Considering the hurry there was in washing up last time.”

      “What do we want from the kitchen? Just grub?”

      “Jug of tea,” said Tom, who was having a hard task to get a screw in straight.

      “Aren’t you boiling the kettle here?”

      “That’s for something else.”

      At last he got rid of them. Port and Starboard went off to the kitchen, and were back again in a few minutes with a huge jug of hot tea (sugar and milk already mixed in it) a loaf and a pot of marmalade. They were not gone long, but the moment they were out of the shed Tom was hurrying down to the Titmouse with the first of the doors, and, by the time they came back with the tea, he was able to call them to the side of the dyke, to show them a closed locker, and, when he opened it, a spoon, a knife, a fork, and a plate stowed away inside.

      “Fine,” said Starboard.

      “You just wait till they’re all done,” said Tom. “There’ll be a partition here, to keep the stove from dirtying the awning. Then there’ll be two lockers on each side here, and one on each side of the mast under the bow thwart. Can’t have them under the rowing thwart, because of sleeping.”

      “Let’s put the awning up now…. What’s all that mess on the bottom-boards?”

      “That’s what I’m hotting up water for,” said СКАЧАТЬ