they approached the shelving mudbanks, purple in the afternoon sunlight, the{18} figure in the bows boated his oar and began to sound cautiously with his boathook. The remaining five oarsmen glanced back over their shoulders and continued paddling. The helmsman smiled tolerantly, as a man might smile at the conceits of childhood, but refrained from speech. They all knew the weakness of the bowman for dabbling in mud.
{18}
“Half a point to port!” said the slim form wielding the dripping boathook. “I can see the channel now.... Steady as you go!” A minute later the boat slid into the main channel and the crew drew in their oars, punting their narrow craft between the banks of ooze. None of them spoke, save the bowman, and he only at rare intervals, flinging back a curt direction to the helmsman over his shoulder.
For half an hour they navigated the channels winding up the valley, and came at length to a crumbling stone quay beside the ruin of a mill. Ferns grew in the interstices of the old brickwork, and a great peace brooded over the silent wood that towered behind. They made the boat fast there; and because boats and the sea were things as yet half-unknown and wholly attractive, none of them attempted to land. Instead, with coats rolled up as pillows and their straw hats tilted over their eyes, the seven{19} made themselves comfortable as only naval cadets could in such cramped surroundings, and from under the thwarts each one drew a paper bag and a bottle of lemonade.
{19}
“Dead low water,” said Number 1 (the bow oar) presently. “We shall have a young flood against us going back; but then there’s no chance of getting stuck on the mud.” He drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and proceeded to take careful soundings round the boat, using the keys as a sinker and the lanyard as a lead-line.
“Oh, shut up about your everlasting tides,” said Number 2, “and keep quiet; I want to sleep.”
“They interest me,” replied Number 1 simply. “I shall be a navigator, I think.”
“You’d better go in for submarines,” said Number 4, applying himself to his bottle of fizzing beverage. “Plenty of poking about mudbanks in them if it interests you. One of the first we ever had stuck in the mud one day and never came up again.”
“P’raps I shall,” admitted the bow. “In fact I shouldn’t be surprised if I did go in for submarining.”
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