The Borrowers Afloat Page 7

  And then they were off again—an endless, monotonous vista of circular walls. Arrietty after a while began to doze; she slid forward against the egg, her head caught up on one knee. Just before she fell asleep, she felt Homily slide the dip from her drooping fingers and wrap her round with Pod's coat.

  When she awoke, the scene was much the same: shadows sliding and flickering on the wet ceiling, Spiller's narrow face palely lit as he trudged along, and the bulky shape beyond that was Pod. Her mother, across the egg, smiled at her bewilderment. "Forgotten where you were?" asked Homily.

  Arrietty nodded. Her mother held a dip in either hand, and the wax, Arrietty noticed, had burned very low. "Must be nearly morning," Arrietty remarked. She still felt very sleepy.

  "Shouldn't wonder..." said Homily.

  The walls slid by, unbroken except for archlike thickenings at regular intervals where one length of pipe joined another. And when they spoke, their voices echoed hollowly back and forth along the tunnel.

  "Aren't there any more branch drains?" Arrietty asked after a moment.

  Spiller shook his head. "No more now. Holmcroft was die last...."

  "But that was ages ago ... we must be nearly there."

  "Getting on," said Spiller.

  Arrietty shivered and drew Pod's coat more tightly around her shoulders; the air seemed fresher suddenly and curiously free from smell. "Or perhaps," she thought, "we've grown more used to it...." There was no sound except for the whispering slide of the soapbox lid and the regular plop and suction of Pod's and Spiller's footsteps. But the silt seemed rather thinner: there was an occasional grating sound below the base of the tin lid as though it rode on grit. Spiller stood still. "Listen!" he said.

  They were all quiet but could hear nothing except Pod's breathing and a faint musical drip somewhere just ahead of them. "Better push on," said Homily suddenly, breaking the tension. "These dips aren't going to last for ever."

  "Quiet!" cried Spiller again. Then they heard a faint drumming sound, hardly more than a vibration.

  "Whatever is it?" asked Homily.

  "Can only be Holmcroft," said Spiller. He stood rigid, with one hand raised, listening intently. "But," he said, turning to Pod, "who ever'd be having a bath at this time o' night?"

  Pod shook his head. "It's morning by now," he said, "must be getting on for six."

  The drumming sound grew louder, less regular, more like a leaping and a banging....

  "We've got to run for it—" cried Spiller. Towline in hand, he swung the tin lid round and, taking the lead, flew ahead into the tunnel. Arrietty and Homily banged and rattled behind him. Dragged on the short line, they swung shatteringly, thrown from wall to wall. But, panic-stricken at the thought of total darkness, each shielded the flame of her candle. Homily stretched out a free hand to Pod who caught hold of it just as his bundle bore down on him, knocking him over. He fell across it, still gripping Homily's hand, and was carried swiftly along.

  "Out and up," cried Spiller from the shadows ahead, and they saw the glistening twigs wedged tautly against the roof. "Let the traps go," he was shouting. "Come on—climb!"

  They each seized a branch and swung themselves up and wedged themselves tight against the ceiling. The overturned dips lay guttering in the tin lid and the air was filled with the sound of galloping water. In the jerking light from the dips they saw the first pearly bubbles and the racing, dancing, silvery bulk behind. And then all was choking, swirling, scented darkness....

  After the first few panic-stricken seconds, Arrietty found she could breathe and that the sticks still held. A millrace of hot scented water swilled through her clothes, piling against her at one moment, falling away the next. Sometimes it bounced above her shoulders, drenching her face and hair; at others it swirled steadily about her waist and tugged at her legs and feet. "Hold on," shouted Pod above the turmoil.

  "Die down soon," shouted Spiller.

  "You there, Arrietty?" gasped Homily. They were all there and all breathing, and, even as they realized this, the water began to drop in level and run less swiftly. Without the brightness of the dips, the darkness about them seemed less opaque, as though a silvery haze rose from the water itself, which seemed now to be running well below them, and from the sound of it, as innocent and steady as a brook.

  After a while they climbed down into it and felt a smoothly running warmth about their ankles. At this level they could see a faint translucence where the surface of the water met the blackness of the walls. "Seems lighter," said Pod wonderingly. He seemed to perceive some shifting in the darkness where Spiller splashed and probed. "Anything there?" he asked.

  "Not a thing," said Spiller.

  Their baggage had disappeared—egg, soapbox lid and all—swept away on the flood.

  "And now what?" asked Pod dismally.

  But Spiller seemed quite unworried. "Pick it up later," he said. "...nothing to hurt. And saves carting."

  Homily was sniffing the air. "Sandalwood!" she exclaimed suddenly to Arrietty. "Your father's favorite soap."

  But Arrietty, her hand on a twig to steady herself against the warm flow eddying past her ankles, did not reply; she was staring straight ahead down the incline of the drain. A bead of light hung in the darkness. For a moment she thought that, by some miraculous chance, it might be one of the dips—then she saw it was completely round and curiously steady. And mingled with the scent of sandalwood she smelled another smell—minty, grassy, mildly earthy...

  "It's dawn," she announced in a wondering voice. "And what's more," she went on, staring spellbound at the distant pearl of light, "that's the end of the drain."

  Chapter Thirteen

  The warmth from the bath water soon wore off and the rest of the walk was chilly. The circle of light grew larger and brighter as they advanced toward it until, at last, its radiance dazzled their eyes.

  "The sun's out," Arrietty decided. It was a pleasant thought, soaked to the skin as they were, and they slightly quickened their steps. The bath-water flow had sunk to the merest trickle and the drain felt gloriously clean.

  Arrietty, too, felt somehow purged as though all traces of the old dark, dusty life had been washed away—even from their clothes. Homily had a similar thought.

  "Nothing like a good, strong stream of soapy water running clean through the fabric ... no rubbing or squeezing; all we've got to do now is lay them out to dry."

  They emerged at last, Arrietty running ahead onto a small sandy beach that fanned out sideways and down to the water in front. The mouth of the drain was set well back under the bank of the stream, which overhung it, crowned with rushes and grasses: a sheltered, windless corner on which the sun beat down, rich with the golden promise of an early summer.

  "But you can never tell," said Homily gazing around at the weatherworn flotsam and jetsam spewed out by the drain, "not in March..."

  They had found Pod's bundle just within the mouth of the drain where the hatpin had stuck in the sand. The soapbox lid had fetched up, upside down, against a protruding root, and the egg, Arrietty discovered, had rolled right into the water; it lay in the shallows below a fish-boning of silver ripples and seemed to have flattened out. But when they hooked it onto the dry sand, they saw it was due to refraction of the water: the egg was still its old familiar shape but covered with tiny cracks. Arrietty and Spiller rolled it up the slope to where Pod was unpacking the water-soaked bundles, anxious to see if the mackintosh covering had worked. Triumphantly he laid out the contents one by one on the warm sand. "Dry as a bone..." he kept saying.

  Homily picked out a change of clothes for each. The jerseys, though clean, were rather worn and stretched: they were the ones she had knitted—so long ago it seemed now—on blunted darning needles when they had lived under the kitchen at Firbank. Arrietty and Homily undressed in the mouth of the drain, but Spiller—although offered a garment of Pod's—would not bother to change. He slid off round the corner of the beach to take a look at his kettle.

  When they
were dressed and the wet clothes spread out to dry, Homily shelled off the top of the egg. Pod wiped down his precious piece of razor blade, oiled to preserve it against rust, and cut them each a slice. They sat in the sunshine, eating contentedly, watching the ripples of the stream. After a while Spiller joined them. He sat just below them, steaming in the warmth and thoughtfully eating his egg.

  "Where is the kettle exactly, Spiller?" asked Arrietty.

  Spiller jerked his head. "Just round the corner."

  Pod had packed the Christmas pudding thimble, and they each had a drink of fresh water. Then they packed up the bundles again, and leaving the clothes to dry, they followed Spiller round the bend.

  It was a second beach, rather more open, and the kettle lay against the bank at the far end. It lay slightly inclined, as Spiller had found it, wedged in by the twigs and branches washed by the river downstream. It was a corner on which floating things caught up and anchored themselves against a projection of the bank; the river twisted inwards at this point, running quite swiftly just below the kettle where, Arrietty noticed, the water looked suddenly deep.

  Beyond the kettle a cluster of brambles growing under the bank hung out over the water—with new leaves growing among the tawny dead ones; some of these older shoots were trailing in the water, and in the tunnel beneath them, Spiller kept his boat.

  Arrietty wanted to see the boat first, but Pod was examining the kettle, in the side of which, where it met the base, was a fair-sized circular rust hole.

  "That the way in?" asked Pod.

  Spiller nodded.

  Pod looked up at the top of the kettle. The lid, he noticed, was not quite in, and Spiller had fixed a piece of twine to the knob in the middle of the lid and had slung it over the arched handle above.

  "Come inside," he said to Pod. "I'll show you..."

  They went inside while Arrietty and Homily waited in the sunshine. Spiller appeared again almost immediately at the rust-hole entrance, exclaiming irritably, "Go on, get out...." And, aided by a shove from Spiller's bare foot, a mottled yellow frog leapt through the air and slithered swiftly into the stream. It was followed by two wood lice, which, as they rolled themselves up in balls, Spiller stooped down and picked up from the floor and threw lightly onto the bank above. "Nothing else," he remarked to Homily, grinning, and disappeared again.

  Homily was silent a moment and then she whispered to Arrietty, "Don't fancy sleeping in there tonight...."

  "We can clean it out," Arrietty whispered back. "Remember the boot," she added.

  Homily nodded, rather unhappily. "When do you think he'll get us down to Little Fordham?"

  "Soon as he's been upstream to load. He likes the moon full...." Arrietty whispered.

  "Why?" whispered Homily.

  "He travels mostly at night."

  "Oh," said Homily, her expression bewildered and slightly wild.

  A metallic sound attracted their attention to the top of the kettle. The lid, they saw, was wobbling on and off, raised and lowered from inside. "According to how you want it..." said a voice. "Very ingenious," they heard a second voice reply in curiously hollow tones.

  "Doesn't sound like Pod," whispered Homily, looking startled.

  "It's because they're in a kettle," explained Arrietty.

  "Oh?" said Homily again. "I wish they'd come out."

  They came out then, even as she spoke. As Pod stepped down on the flat stone that was used as a doorstep, he looked very pleased. "See that?" he said to Homily.

  Homily nodded.

  "Ingenious, eh?"

  Homily nodded again.

  "Now," Pod went on happily, "we're going to take a look at Spiller's boat. What sort of shoes you got on?"

  They were old ones Pod had made. "Why?" asked Homily. "Is it muddy?"

  "Not that I know of. But if you're going aboard, you don't want to slip. Better go barefoot like Arrietty...."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Although she seemed nearly aground, a runnel of ice-cold water ran between the boat and the shore; through this they waded, and Spiller, at the prow, helped them to climb aboard. Roomy but clumsy (Arrietty thought as she scrambled in under the legging) but, with her flat bottom, practically impossible to capsize. She was, in fact, as Homily had guessed, a knife box: very long and narrow, with symmetrical compartments for varying sizes of cutlery.

  "More what you'd call a barge," remarked Pod, looking about him. A wooden handle rose up inside, to which, he noticed, the legging had been nailed. "Holds her firm," explained Spiller, tapping the roof of the canopy, "say you want to lift up the sides."

  The holds were empty at the moment, except for the narrowest. In this Pod saw an amber-colored knitting needle that ran the length of the vessel, a folded square of frayed red blanket, a wafer-thin butter knife of tarnished Georgian silver, and the handle and blade of his old nail scissor.

  "So you've still got that?" he said.

  "Comes in useful," said Spiller. "Careful," he said as Pod took it up, "I've sharpened it up a bit."

  "Wouldn't mind this back," said Pod, a trifle enviously, "say, one day, you got another like it."

  "Not so easy to come by," said Spiller, and as though to change the subject, he took up the butter knife. "Found this wedged down a crack in the side ... does me all right for a paddle."

  "Just the thing," said Pod. All the cracks and joins were filled in now, he noticed, as regretfully he put back the nail scissor. "Where did you pick up this knife box in the first place?"

  "Lying on the bottom upstream. Full of mud when I spotted her. Bit of a job to salvage. Up by the caravans, that's where she was. Like as not, someone pinched the silver and didn't want the box."

  "Like as not," said Pod. "So you sharpened her up?" he went on, staring again at the nail scissor.

  "That's right," said Spiller, and stooping swiftly, he snatched up the piece of blanket, "You take this," he said. "Might be chilly in the kettle."

  "What about you?" said Pod.

  "That's all right," said Spiller. "You take it!"

  "Oh," exclaimed Homily, "it's the bit we had in the boot..." and then she colored slightly. "I think," she added.

  "That's right," said Spiller, "better you take it."

  "Well, thanks," said Pod and threw it over his shoulder. He looked around again; the legging, he realized, was both camouflage and shelter. "You done a good job, Spiller. I mean ... you could live in a boat like this—come wind, say, and wet weather."

  "That's right," agreed Spiller, and he began to ease the knitting needle out from under the legging, the knob emerging forward at an angle. "Don't want to hurry you," he said.

  Homily seemed taken aback. "You going already?" she faltered.

  "Sooner he's gone, sooner he's back," said Pod. "Come on, Homily, all ashore now."

  "But how long does he reckon he'll be?"

  "What would you put it at, Spiller?" asked Pod. "A couple of days? Three? Four? A week?"

  "May be less, may be more," said Spiller. "Depends on the weather. Three nights from now, say, if it's moonlight...."

  "But what if we're asleep in the kettle?" said Homily.

  "That's all right, Homily; Spiller will knock." Pod took her firmly by the elbow. "Come on now, all ashore ... you too, Arrietty."

  As Homily, with Pod's help, was lowered into the water, Arrietty jumped from the side; the wet mud, she noticed, was spangled all over with tiny footprints. They linked arms and stood well back to watch Spiller depart. He unloosed the painter, and paddle in hand, let the boat slide stern foremost from under the brambles. As it glided out into open water, it became unnoticeable suddenly and somehow part of the landscape; it might have been a curl of bark or a piece of floating wood.

  It was only when Spiller laid down the paddle and stood up to punt with the knitting needle that he became at all conspicuous. They watched through the brambles as, slowly and painstakingly, leaning at each plunge on his pole, he began to come back upstream. As he came abreast of them, the
y ran out from the brambles to see better. Shoes in hand, they crossed the beach of the kettle and, to keep up with him, climbed round the bluff at the corner and onto the beach of the drain. There, by a tree root, which came sharply into deepish water, they waved him a last good-by.

  "Wish he hadn't had to go," said Homily, as they made their way back across the sand toward the mouth of the drain.

  There lay their clothes, drying in the sun, and as they approached, an iridescent cloud like a flock of birds flew off the top of the egg. "Bluebottles!" cried Homily, running forward; then, relieved, she slackened her steps. They were not bluebottles after all but cleanly burnished river flies, striped gaily with blue and gold. The egg appeared untouched, but Homily blew on it hard and dusted it up with her apron because, she explained, "You never know where they may have put their feet...."

  Pod, poking about among the flotsam and jetsam, salvaged the circular cork that Homily had used as a seat. "This'll just about do it..." he murmured reflectively.

  "Do what?" asked Arrietty idly. A beetle had run out from where the cork had been resting, and stooping, she held it by its shell. She liked beetles: their shiny, clear-cut armor, their mechanical joints and joins. And she liked just a little to tease them: they were so easy to hold by the sharp edge of their wing casings and so anxious to get away.

  "One day you'll get bitten..." Homily warned her as she folded up the clothes, which still, though dry, smelled faintly and pleasantly of sandalwood, "or stung, or nipped, or whatever they do, and serve you right."

  Arrietty let the beetle go. "They don't mind, really," she remarked, watching the horned legs scuttle up the slope and the fine grains of dislodged sand tumbling down behind them.

  "And here's a hairpin," exclaimed Pod. It was the one Arrietty had found in the drain, clean-washed now and gleaming. "You know what we should do," he went on, "while we're here, that is?"

  "What?" asked Homily.

  "Come along here regular like, every morning, and see what the drain's brought down."