“Have you got the cotton?” called Dick.
“I’ve got it! Steady, William!”
“Haul it in gently. Very gently!”
“Sure you’ve made the string fast to it?”
The ball of string leapt from side to side in the well as they paid it out over the side, and Tom hauling in the cotton dragged the end of it across the mud.
“Got it,” shouted Tom. “Well done, whoever thought of that! Do keep still, William.”
“Now for the rope,” said Dick, “and then we can get the things across. The string won’t bear anything.…”
“Haul in again, Tom,” called Starboard, who, without cutting the string, had made it fast to the end of the big coil of rope that had not been used since they came through Yarmouth: A snake of rope crept away over the mud as the twins paid it out from the foredeck, while the string went on unrolling in the well.
“Got it,” shouted Tom. “Now what?”
“We must haul our half of the string back,” shouted Dick. “Hang on to your end of it. Then we can use it for pulling things each way along the rope.”
“You’ll want a shackle to run on the rope,” shouted Tom. “There’s a spare one in the forepeak. Right in the bows.”
“I’ve got it,” said Port.
“Splendid,” said the Admiral. “But, oh, I do hope poor William won’t have caught his death of cold.”
“Well send across his bit of chocolate.”
“Cod-liver oil,” said the Admiral, “is what he ought to have.”
“We’ll send that across, too,” said Dorothea, wriggling into the slanting cabin. “Tom’ll have a spoon, won’t he?”
“William always likes to have his own,” said the Admiral.
So the first parcel ready to travel by the rope railway that now stretched between the Teasel and the Titmouse was a scrap of chocolate, a bottle of cod-liver oil, and his own spoon for William, the pioneer, who had crossed the mud and made the railway possible.
“It’ll get awfully muddy going across,” said Dorothea.
“Couldn’t we hoist it up at both ends?” said Dick.
“Of course we could,” said Starboard. “Hi! Tom! Hoist your end of the rope up.… Top of the mast.… Keep things out of the mud.…”
That was easy. Tom fastened Titmouse’s halyard to his end of the rope and hauled it up as if he were hoisting a sail. The twins, aboard the Teasel, did the same. A moment later the rope was no longer lying on the mud, but stretched from masthead to masthead. The shackle, loose on the rope, had already been made fast to the string, and William’s parcel had been tied to the shackle.
“All ready now,” called Starboard.
Tom hauled in on the string. The parcel, amid cheers, left the masthead of the Teasel and moved slowly out. The rope sagged a bit in the middle, but the parcel was well above the mud. When it had reached the masthead of the Titmouse, Tom slacked away his halyard and a moment later had the parcel in his hands.
“Send us across a drop of water,” called the Admiral, “and we can pour it into our kettle and put in on to boil. Don’t try to send too much at once.”
“Does William have his oil after chocolate or before it?” asked Tom, as the Titmouse’s kettle went on its way, sloping a little from the spout in spite of Dick’s trying not to jerk it as he hauled in on the string.
“Chocolate always comes afterwards,” called William’s mistress.
“Now, William,” said Tom, carefully balancing the brimming spoon, as he gathered the muddy William in one arm and made him sit as he had seen him sit on the Admiral’s knee that wet day at Ranworth and again at Oulton Broad. And William, glad of anything to which he was accustomed, sat on Tom’s knee in the Titmouse, aground on the Breydon mud, and lapped up his cod-liver oil as if he had been at home.
Then back by the rope railway came the little kettle to be filled again. Three or four times it went to and fro. Already, in the Teasel the Primus was at work, propped in a corner of the well, with a paint-box under it at one side to keep it level. Then a loaf of bread was sent across. The eggs, for fear of accident, were divided into two lots, and travelled in the basket, a dozen at a time. The milk, too, was sent over in small lots, in the Titmouse’s milk-can. “Don’t you bother about making tea, Tom,” called Mrs. Barrable when she saw that Tom was lighting his oil-stove. “We’ll send yours as soon as it’s ready, but if you could manage some bread and milk for William.…”
As soon as the big kettle had boiled, the Teasel sent the little milk-can, full of hot tea, by rope railway to the Titmouse, together with two boiled eggs tied up in a handkerchief, and a big bread and butter sandwich to eat with them. Meanwhile, Tom, in the Titmouse, had warmed a little milk in his frying-pan because he had not got a saucepan. He had chopped up some bread and added it to the milk, and William, though he would rather have had it from his own saucer, had decided to make the best of things. In both ships everybody was settling down to the first good meal that day. They were aground on the mud. They had missed their tide. They had lost their chance of getting through Yarmouth that day. Everything was going wrong. But, at least, thanks to Tom, to Dick, and to the heroic William, no one was any longer in danger of starvation.
CHAPTER XXVIII
WRECK AND SALVAGE
“TIDE’S begun coming up again,” called Tom at last. “It’ll be turning in the Bure in another hour, and boats going south’ll be coming through.”
Slowly the water came licking up over the edge of the mudflats, little thin waves hurrying over the mud and going back to meet other little waves that spread wider and wider. Herons were fishing knee-deep, ready for small fish coming unsuspectingly up with the tide. With the change of the tide the fog lifted. Pale sunlight made its way through. The crew of the Teasel could see far down Breydon to the railway bridge, and up to the meeting of the rivers at the head of it. Away to the north a big black wherry sail showed above the low-lying land. The shallow creek through which the Teasel must have sailed before she stuck, filled with water. Water rose slowly round the big black posts that marked the deep-water channel. Water crept over the mud, nearer and nearer to the Titmouse. It was time to get ready. Tom’s plans were made. As soon as the Teasel floated he would tow her out into the deep water, and then they would sail back to the pilot’s moorings to wait for the morning tide.
“Anything else to go across?” he shouted.
“Couldn’t you send William back by the railway before you take it down?” suggested Dorothea.
“Too heavy,” said Tom. “He’d drag in the mud and make the Teasel as dirty as poor old Titmouse. He’s fairly clean now.”
“You keep him,” said the Admiral, looking up at the mention of William’s name. She was sitting on the upper edge of the sloping cabin roof, and making a sketch of Breydon at low tide, with the little Titmouse reflected in the pearly shine of the mud almost as if in water.
“I’m going to cast off my end of the rope,” said Tom. “So that I can get my mast down. Titmouse’ll be wanted as a dinghy pretty soon.”
He unfastened the rope from the halyard and dropped it on the mud. “Haul away!”
“Coil it down, Twin. In with it.”
Port and Starboard, miserably thinking of tomorrow’s race, and of the A.P. without his crew, were cheered at having something to do. For a few yards they hauled in the tow-rope hand over hand, and then stopped short as they came to the part of the rope that had dragged over the mud.
“Pretty smelly,” said Starboard. “Look out. Stop pulling. We can’t stow it in the forepeak till it’s had a bit of washing.”
“Keep it off the cabin roof,” said Port. “Don’t let the mud get on the sails. Shove that jib out of the way, somebody with clean hands. Lucky we rolled it up at once.”
“Come on, Dick,” said Dorothea, and Dick gave up looking for the vanished spoonbills, and helped her to take the jib, rolled up round its short boom, and stow it in the cabin out of danger.
“Hi,” cal
led Tom. “Don’t try to stow that rope in the forepeak. I’ll be using it to tow Teasel out into the channel, and that’ll wash the mud off it.”
The rope was coiled down on the foredeck, just as it was, grey with mud, and green with scraps of twisted weed, while Dick was busy winding up the string that had been used for hauling the shackle to and fro.
“The water’s right up to me,” called Tom. “I’ll be afloat in another ten minutes.”
“It’s all round us already,” Dorothea shouted back.
The water spread slowly over the mud between the Titmouse and the Teasel. Anyone who did not know that it was mostly only an inch deep might have thought they were afloat, except that the Teasel was leaning over on one side.
“There’s the first boat through,” called Dorothea.
Everybody looked down Breydon water and those two long lines of beacon posts stretching away to Yarmouth. Down there, far away, a small black spot was moving in the channel. If they had not been so busy, they would have noticed it before.
“Only a rowing boat,” said Starboard. “Probably a fisherman coming home with the tide. The water’s really coming up now. Let’s try to get afloat before he gets here.”
“Anyway that one’s not a rowing boat,” said Dorothea a few minutes later.
“Motor-cruiser,” said Port, glancing over her shoulder.
“It’s a jolly big one,” said Starboard.
All work stopped aboard the Teasel. There was something in Starboard’s voice that held even the Admiral’s chalk in mid-air, and stopped Dick in winding the string into a ball, though he had just found the scientific way of winding it so that the turns did not slip off. Tom heard nothing. He was busy tugging at his mast, which was always rather hard to work out of its hole in the bow thwart.
“But it can’t be,” said Starboard. “Bill said yesterday they wouldn’t be able to leave Wroxham for another two days.”
“He must have got it a day wrong,” said Port. “I’m sure it’s them. Tom! Tom! Hullabaloos!”
“Oh, hide! hide!” cried Dorothea.
Tom turned round and stopped wrestling with the Titmouse’s mast. There could be no doubt about it. The cruiser had passed the rowing boat now, and came racing up Breydon, foam flying from her bows, a V of wash spreading astern of her across the channel and sending long bustling waves chasing one another over the mudflats. Even in the dark Tom had known the noise of the Margoletta’s engine. He knew it now, and the tremendous volume of sound sent out by her loud-speaker.
He looked this way and that. If those people had glasses or a telescope they might have seen him already. Anyhow, there could be no getting away. He felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web, seeing the spider hurrying towards it. There they were, Teasel and Titmouse, stuck on the mud in shallow water, plain for anyone to see. If only the water had risen another few inches and set them afloat. But even if it had, where could they have gone? There was only one thing to be done. It was a poor chance, but the only one. Tom made one desperate signal to the others to disappear, and, himself, slipped down out of sight on the muddy bottom-boards of the Titmouse, and, holding William firmly in his arms, told him what a good dog he was and begged him to keep still.
Aboard the Teasel no one saw that signal. Their eyes were all on the Margoletta. It was not till several minutes later that Dorothea whispered, “Tom’s gone, anyway.”
The little Titmouse, now that the water had spread all round her over the mud, looked like a deserted boat, afloat and anchored.
On came the Margoletta, sweeping up with the tide, and filling the quiet evening with a loud treacly voice:
“I want to be a darling, a doodle-um, a duckle-um,
I want to be a ducky, doodle darling, yes,
I do.”
“Indeed,” muttered Port, with a good deal of bitterness.
“Try next door,” said Starboard.
They spoke almost in whispers, as the big motor-cruiser came nearer and nearer, though no one aboard it could possibly have heard them.
“We ought to have done like Tom and hidden,” said Dorothea. “Let’s.”
“Keep still,” said the Admiral. “It’s too late now. They’re bound to notice if we start disappearing all of a sudden.”
“Good,” whispered Starboard. “They’re going right past.”
And then the worst happened.
William, still slippery with mud in spite of Tom’s pocket handkerchief, indignant at being held a prisoner while this great noise came nearer and nearer, gave a sturdy wriggle, escaped from Tom’s arms, bounded up on a thwart and barked at the top of his voice.
“Oh! William! Traitor! Traitor!” almost sobbed Dorothea.
“They’ve seen!” said Port.
The man at the wheel of the cruiser was looking straight at the Titmouse and at the Teasel beyond her.
“Here they are,” he suddenly shouted, to be heard even above the loud-speaker and the engine. He spun his wheel, swung the Margoletta round so sharply that she nearly capsized, and headed directly for the Titmouse.…
“Ow! Look out!” cried Starboard, almost as if she were aboard the cruiser and saw the danger ahead.
“They’ve forgotten the tide,” said Port.
The next moment the crash came. Just as the rest of the Hullabaloos poured out of the cabins, startled by the sudden way in which the steersman had swung her round, the Margoletta, moving at full speed towards the Titmouse, and swept up sideways by the tide, hit the big beacon post with her port bow. There was the cracking of timbers and the rending of wood as the planking was crushed in. Then the tide swung her stern round and she drifted on.
The noise became deafening. The loud-speaker went on pouring out its horrible song. All the people aboard the Margoletta were either shouting or shrieking and something extraordinary had happened to the engine which, after stopping dead, was racing like the engine of an aeroplane. Nobody knew till afterwards that the steersman had switched straight from “full ahead” to “full astern,” had wrenched the propeller right off its shaft, stalled his engine, started it again and was letting it rip at full throttle, pushing his lever to and fro trying to make his engine turn a propeller that was no longer there.
THE WRECK WAS DRIFTING AWAY
Everything had changed in a moment. That crash of the Margoletta against the huge old post on which Tom had been watching the falling and the rising of the tide brought him up from the bottom-boards of the Titmouse in time to see the wreck go drifting up the channel with a gaping wound in her bows and the water lapping in. No longer was he hiding from the Hullabaloos. They were shouting at him to come and save them, shouting at Tom, whom only a few moments before they had thought was a prisoner almost in their hands. And Tom was desperately rocking the Titmouse in an inch or two of water, trying to get her afloat so that he could dash to their rescue.
The three Coots, Tom, Port and Starboard, knew at once how serious was the danger of the Hullabaloos. Just for a moment or two the others were ready to rejoice that Tom had escaped them. But soon they, too, saw how badly damaged the Margoletta was. They saw, too, that the Hullabaloos, instead of doing the best that could be done for themselves, were making things far worse. The Margoletta had been towing a dinghy. Two of the men rushed aft and tried to loose the painter and bring the dinghy alongside. They hampered each other. One pulled out a knife and cut the rope, thinking the other had hold of it. The rope dropped. They grabbed at it and missed. The dinghy drifted with every moment farther out of reach. They seized a boat-hook, tried to catch the dinghy and lost the boat-hook at the first attempt.
“She’s down by the head already,” said Starboard. “Oh can’t they stop that awful song?”
The crew of the Teasel watched what was happening, hardly able to breathe. There was the cruiser drifting away with the tide up the deep channel. With every moment it was clearer that she had not long to float. Were the whole lot of the Hullabaloos to be drowned before their eyes? Would no one come to the resc
ue?
They looked despairingly towards Yarmouth. That rowing boat was coming along. But so slowly, and so far away. Too late. They would be bound to be too late, with nothing but oars to help them. But something was happening in that boat. They could see the flash of oars, but surely that was a mast tottering up and into place in the bows. And then, in short jerks, a grey, ragged, patched old lugsail, far too small for the boat, rose cockeye to the masthead. The sail filled, and the oars stopped for a moment while the sheet was taken aft.
“Hurrah!” shouted Port as loud as she could shout. “Hurrah! It’s the Death and Glories!”
Nobody else in all Norfolk had a ragged sail of quite that shape and colour. How they had got down to Breydon nobody asked at that moment. It was enough that they were there, while the Teasel and the Titmouse, still fast aground, could do nothing but watch that race between life and death. The wind was still blowing from the east, and the old Death and Glory, her oars still flashing although she was under sail, was coming along as fast as ever in her life. She might do it yet. And then the watchers turned the other way to see the drifting cruiser, her bows much lower in the water, the Hullabaloos crowded together on the roof of her after-cabin.
“She’ll go all of a rush when she does go,” said Starboard under her breath.
“Deep water, too,” said Port.
Minute after minute went by, and then the Death and Glory swept past them up the channel, her tattered and patched old sail swelling in the wind, Bill and Pete, each with two hands to an oar, taking stroke after stroke as fast as they could to help her along, while Joe stood in the stern, hand on tiller, eyes fixed on the enemy ahead who had suddenly become a wreck to be salved.
“Go it, the Death and Glories!” shouted Starboard.
“Stick to it!” “You’ll do it!” “Hurrah!” “Keep it up!” shouted the others. And William, not in the least knowing what it was all about, jumped up first on one thwart of the Titmouse and then on another and nearly burst his throat with barking.