Was it deserted? Or not? Tom peered through the twilight. No. It was as if the centre of the nest was capped with a black dome, and on the dome he had just seen the white splash of a coot’s forehead. And what was that other shadow working along close under the bank? It was enough. Tom did not want to frighten them again. He paddled quietly on. One thing was all right, anyhow. The coots of No. 7 were at home once more.
It was growing dark now. Nobody but Tom was moving on the river, and the only noise was the loud singing of the birds on both banks and over the marshes, whistling blackbirds, throaty thrushes, starlings copying first one and then the other, a snipe drumming overhead. Everything was all right with everybody. And then a pale barn owl swayed across the river like a great moth, and with her, furiously chattering, a little crowd of small birds, for whom the owl was nothing but an enemy. And suddenly into Tom’s head came a picture of the Margoletta as a hostile owl, mobbed by a lot of small birds, the Death and Glories and himself.
Was that what had really been happening? It looked very like it if you chose to think of it that way. The Hullabaloos, horrid as they were, had only asked to be left alone. What would his father think of it? There were so few rules for the fortunate children of the river-side. They could do what they liked, more or less, so long as they managed to keep out of any trouble with the foreigners. That was the one thing that really mattered. A quarrel with George Owdon, for example, would not matter at all. Everybody knew who George was, and everybody knew what he was. Grown-up people would say something about “Boys will be boys,” and think no more about it. But a quarrel with foreigners, with visitors to the Broads, was altogether different. “Don’t get mixed up with foreigners” was the beginning and the end of the law. “Help them to set their sails if they ask for help. If they don’t know they need help, leave them alone. Show them the way when they ask it. Tow them off when they get themselves aground. Answer their questions no matter how stupid they seem. But do not get mixed up with them.”
And Tom, remembering what he had seen and heard while he was lurking in the reeds beside the Teasel, knew that the Hullabaloos of the Margoletta were very angry indeed. To say that he had got mixed up with them was to put it much too mildly. He had made enemies of them. They had not sounded at all as if they were the kind of people who would forget what had happened or forgive it. And what if they found out who he was and went and made a row about it? The doctor’s son casting loose a moored boat full of perfect strangers…. His cheeks went hot at the thought. But at least no one who knew him had seen him … and then, suddenly, Tom remembered George Owdon lounging on the ferry raft when he had been paddling the Dreadnought on his way to the rescue of No. 7. Would George tell? Hardly. George was a beast, but, after all, he was a Norfolk coot, like the rest of them, though, of course, not a member of the Coot Club, which was an affair of Tom and the twins. No, not even George Owdon would do a thing like that.
But, as he paddled on and on up the river, Tom grew more and more bothered about what had happened. It was not a question of being found out. Why, even Mrs. Barrable, the old lady of the Teasel who had joined in so splendidly on his side, was a visitor. And those two children he had met in the train and had now met again…. Mixed up with foreigners? He seemed to be head over ears in them. And it had all come about so quickly. What ought he to have done? Let No. 7 be ruined at the last moment, after all that watching and the careful way in which the coots had fought the floods by building up their nest? Again he saw those anxious scutterings at the far side of the river. He could not have allowed them to be kept off their eggs until it was too late. What else could he have done? Tom wanted advice, and when he passed the Ferry, and was coming up towards Horning village, he was very glad to see the glow of a cigarette at the edge of the lawn, and to find his father, resting from victims at last, watching or rather listening to the big bream that come up in the evening and turn over on the top of the water to stir the heart of any fisherman who sees or hears them.
“Hullo, old chap,” said his father. “Where have you been? And what have you done with the twins? I thought you had one of your meetings on. Be quiet while you’re coming ashore. Your mother says we’re to be careful not to wake the monster.”
Tom switched his paddle across and held it and turned the old Dreadnought neatly into the dyke. Usually he protested when his father spoke of the new baby as “the monster”. Tonight he hardly noticed it.
Dr. Dudgeon strolled round through the bushes and was there in the dusk beside the dyke, ready to help Tom to moor the punt.
“I thought you’d have given up the old Dreadnought altogether,” he said, “after last night’s sleeping in the Titmouse.”
“I had something special to do,” said Tom, “and, anyhow, there wasn’t any wind…. I say, dad….”
“All right at your end?”
“Right.”
“Your mother says we must keep quiet another five minutes and then creep in to supper.”
“Look here, dad, what would you do if the only way to get to our baby was up this dyke, and mother and you and me were all on the other side of the river, and a huge motor-cruiser was fixed right across the opening of the dyke so that none of us could get in, and our baby was all alone, and we knew that if we didn’t get to him soon he’d go and die?”
“Do?” said the doctor. “Why, we’d scupper that cruiser. We’d blow it sky high. We’d … But what’s it all about, old chap? Don’t you go trapping me into prescribing before diagnosis. Let’s have the symptoms first. Tell me all about it….”
And Tom, walking up and down with his father in the darkening garden, and already feeling a good deal better, poured out the whole story.
An hour or so later, when they had had their supper, and Tom and his father had been allowed to go in on tiptoe and see their baby asleep with a purple fist in its mouth, Tom was back in the Titmouse, making ready for the night. The awning of the Titmouse glowed like a paper lantern, with wild shadows moving on it as Tom pushed things into their places and wriggled himself down into his sleeping-bag.
He heard his father’s voice on the bank.
“Tom.”
“Yes.”
“Thinking it all over, you know, in terms of the monster, and talking it over with your mother, considering her as a coot, I’ve come to a conclusion. It’s a pity it’s happened, of course, and I’ll be very much obliged to you if you can manage not to let those rowdies catch you, but, looking at the case as a whole, your mother on one side of the cruiser and our baby on the other, I don’t really see what else you could have done.”
“I won’t let them catch me,” said Tom.
“I’d much rather they didn’t,” said his father. “Good night, old chap.”
“Good night, dad,” said Tom, and blew out his candle lantern.
“Half a minute, Tom, here’s your mother coming out.”
Mrs. Dudgeon rubbed with her finger on the taut cloth of the awning.
“Still worrying about it, Tom? I don’t think you need. You’ll have all coots and all mothers on your side. Now, go to sleep. We’ll leave the garden door on the latch, so that you can come in early if you want to. Good night.”
“Good night,” said Tom.
He heard
