ferry with a boat or two moored beside it. Dorothea pointed to one of these, but Mrs. Barrable shook her head. That was the end of the village, and the launch put on speed once more. They passed a little church and a big house on the slope of a hill, with crowds of water-hens and black sheep feeding together by the waterside. Here, too, was a boat tied up in a dyke. But it was not that boat either.
“It can’t be much further,” said Dick.
“Mother said it was at Horning,” said Dorothea.
“Keep a good look-out,” said Mrs. Barrable.
And the river went on bending and curling and twisting, and every other moment they thought they would be seeing their boat.
They came in sight of her at last and did not know her, a neat, white yacht, moored against the bank, with an awning spread over cabin and well, as if she were all ready for the night.
“THE LAUNCH WAS SWINGING ROUND”
“Oh, look, look!” cried Dorothea. But it was not at the yacht that she was looking. Working up the river was an old black ship’s boat, with a stumpy little mast and a black flag at the masthead. Two small boys were rowing, each with one oar. A third, standing by the tiller, was looking through an enormous ancient telescope at something on the bank. The three small boys had bright coloured handkerchiefs round their heads and middles as turbans and belts. The launch was racing down the river to meet them, and in a moment or two, Dick and Dorothea were reading the name of the boat, Death and Glory, not very well painted, in big white letters, on her bows.
“You hardly expected to meet pirates on the Bure, did you?” said Mrs. Barrable.
The boatman laughed. The steersman of the Death and Glory waved his big telescope as the launch went by, and the boatman waved back. “Horning boys,” he said over his shoulder. “Boatbuilders’ sons, all three of ’em. Friends o’ Port and Starboard an’ young Tom Dudgeon.”
But what was happening? The noise of the engine had changed. The launch was swinging round in the river towards that moored yacht. The loose flaps of the yacht’s white awning stirred. A fat fawn pug clambered out on the counter and ran, barking, up and down the narrow side-deck.
“It’s William!” cried Dorothea.
“Hullo, William!” said Dick.
“Here we are,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Poor old William must be tired of taking care of the Teasel all by himself.”
“She’s ever so much bigger than she looks,” said Dick.
The parcels and suit-cases had all been put aboard, the little dinghy had been tied up astern, the launch had gone, and Dick, who had been standing rather unsteadily on the counter of the yacht, had climbed down into the well to find himself in a comfortable sort of tent, full of light which poured through the white canvas of the awning.
“Here are your sandshoes,” said Dorothea. “Mother said we were to wear them on board. I ought to have got them out in the launch.”
Putting on sandshoes instead of their walking shoes was itself enough to make them feel that their sailing had all but begun.
“There’ll be much more room when we’ve got rid of the parcels,” said Mrs. Barrable. “All the stores go into the lockers you’re sitting on. Come in now, and bring those suit-cases. No. You won’t have to duck your heads if you keep in the middle. This is the main cabin, and through here is yours.”
They wriggled round the table, and through the little folding door into the cabin that was to be their own. On each side was a bunk spread with thick red blankets.
“May we lie down, just to try?” said Dorothea.
“Of course.”
“There’s lots of room,” said Dick.
“And if you joggle you can feel the boat move,” said Dorothea.
“And electric light,” said Dick, turning the switch on and off. “How do they manage it in such a little boat?”
“Batteries,” said Mrs. Barrable. “We get them charged once a week or so, and they last out very well unless someone does too much reading in bed.”
They unpacked the suit-cases and stowed most of their things in the drawers under their bunks. They looked out at a world of reeds and water that seemed somehow different when seen through a port-hole. They went back into the main cabin and tried what it felt like to be sitting on bunks at each side of a table. After that, of course, they climbed out through the flaps of the awning, and worked their way unsteadily along the narrow side-decks, leaning against the awning to feel less insecure. They took hold of the shrouds and looked up at the masthead and tried to believe that it would not take them very long to learn the names of all those ropes.
Presently Mrs. Barrable lit a Primus stove in the cooking locker in the well and put a kettle on to boil. Dick and Dorothea were watching the kettle, and Mrs. Barrable was in the cabin, putting some paint brushes to soak, when the noise of water creaming under the forefoot of a boat made them look out just in time to get a second view of the yacht race, as the five little racers sailed by. Port and Starboard and their father were now third.
“They’ve got time to win yet,” said Mrs. Barrable.
Twenty minutes later they saw them again, on their way back up the river. The folding table had been moved into the well, tea had been poured out, and Dick had been sent into the cabin to get William’s chocolate-box from the little sideboard, when Dorothea, peeping out from the stern, saw the white sails moving above the reeds. In another moment the boats themselves were in sight, and Dorothea, Mrs. Barrable and Dick hurried out on deck.
“They’ve done it,” cried Dorothea.
“Very nearly,” said Mrs. Barrable.
“Flash, their boat’s called,” said Dick, and Flash was second, and the steerman of the leading boat kept looking anxiously over his shoulder.
“Go it, go it!” cried Dorothea, and almost fancied that Port … or was it Starboard? … one or other of them, anyway … smiled at her as the Flash foamed by. All five boats were out of sight in no time round the bend of the river above where the Teasel was moored.
And then, just after Dick and Dorothea had settled down to enjoy their first tea afloat, suddenly and altogether unexpectedly, the blow fell.
“When are we going to start?” said Dick, asking the question that had been for some time in both their minds. “I suppose it’s too late to do anything tonight.”
“Start?” said Mrs. Barrable, puzzled. “Start what?”
“Sailing,” said Dick.
“But, my dears, we aren’t going to sail…. Didn’t I explain to your mother? We can’t sail the Teasel with Brother Richard away…. I can’t sail the Teasel by myself…. And you can’t, either…. We’re only going to use her as a houseboat….”
