The two long whistle blasts signified a threat by water. Though most travellers nowadays were peaceable (and paid toll before they passed under Sparcot bridge), few of the villagers had forgotten the day, five or six years ago, when they had been threatened by a solitary river pirate armed with a flamethrower. Flamethrowers seemed to be growing scarcer. Like petrol, machine-guns, and ammunition, they were the produce of another century, and the relics of a vanished world. But anything arriving by water was the subject for a general stand to.
Accordingly, a strongly armed party of villagers — many of them carried home-made bows and arrows — was gathered along the riverside by the time the strange boat came up. They crouched behind a low and broken wall, ready to attack or defend, a little extra excitement shaking through their veins.
The approaching boat travelled sideways to the stream. It was manned by as unruly a set of landlubbers as ever cast anchor. The oarsmen seemed as much concerned with keeping the boat from capsizing as with making progress forward; as it was, they appeared to be having little luck in either endeavour.
This lack of skill was due not only to the difficulty inherent in rowing a fifty-year-old, thirty-feet long cruiser with a rotten hull; nor to the presence aboard of fully a dozen people with their possessions. In the cockpit of the cruiser, struggling under the grip of four men, was a rebellious pack reindeer.
Although the beast had been pollarded — as the custom was since the animal was introduced into the country by one of the last authoritarian governments some twenty years ago — it was strong enough to cause considerable damage; and reindeer were more valuable than men. They could be used for milking and meat production when cattle were scarce, and they made good transport animals; whereas men could only grow older.
Despite this distraction, one of the navigators, acting as lookout and standing in the bow of the boat, sighted the massed forces of Sparcot and called out a warning. She was a tall dark woman, lean and hard, her dyed black hair knotted down under a scarf. When she called to the rowers, the promptness with which they rested on their oars showed how glad they were to do so. Someone squatting behind one of the baggages of clothing piled on deck passed the dark woman a white flag. She thrust it aloft and called out to the waiting villagers over the water.
“What’s she yelling about?” John Meller asked. He was an old soldier who had once been a sort of batman to Mole, until the latter threw him out in exasperation as useless. Nearly ninety, Meller was as thin as a staff and as deaf as a stone, though his one remaining eye was still sharp.
The woman’s voice came again, confident though it asked a favour. “Let us come by in peace. We have no wish to harm you and no need to stop. Let us by, villagers!”
Greybeard bawled her message into Meller’s ear. The whitehead shook his scruffy skull and grinned to show he had not heard. “Kill the men and rape the women! I’ll take the dark-haired hussy in the front.”
Mole and Trouter came forward, shouting orders. They had evidently decided they were under no serious threat from the boat.
“We must stop them and inspect them,” Mole said. “Get the pole out. Move there, you men! Let’s have a parley with this shower and see who they are and what they want. They must have something we need.”
During this activity, Towin Thomas had come up beside Greybeard and Charley Samuels. In his efforts to see the boat clearly, he knotted his face into a grimace. He dug Greybeard in the ribs with a patched elbow.
“Hey, Greybeard, that reindeer wouldn’t come amiss for the heavy work, would it?” he said, sucking the end of his cudgel reflectively. “We could use it behind the plough, couldn’t we?”
“We’ve no right to take it from them.”
“You’re not getting religious ideas about that reindeer, are you? You’re letting old Charley’s line of talk get you down.”
“I never listen to a thing either Charley or you say,” Greybeard said. A long pole that had done duty carrying telephone wires in the days when a telephone system existed was slid out across the water, until its tip rested between two stones on the farther bank. The river narrowed here towards the ruined bridge farther downstream. This spot had afforded the villagers a useful revenue for years; their levies on river-going craft supplemented their less enthusiastic attempts at husbandry. It was the one inspired idea of Big Jim Mole’s otherwise dull and oppressive reign. To reinforce the threat of the pole, the Sparcot men now showed themselves in strength along the bank. Mole ran forward brandishing a sword, calling for the strangers to heave to.
The tall dark woman on the boat waved her fists at them. “Respect the white flag of peace, you mangy bastards!” she yelled. “Let us come by without spoiling. We’re homeless as it is. We’ve nothing to spare for the likes of you.”
Her crew had less spirit than she. They shipped their oars and punting sticks and let the boat drift under the stone bridge until it rested against the pole. Elated to find such a defenceless prize, the villagers dragged it against the near bank with grapnels. The reindeer lifted its heavy head and blared its defiance, the dark woman shrieked her disgust.
“Hey there, you with the butcher’s snout,” she cried, pointing at Mole. “You listen to me, we’re your neighbours. We only come from Grafton Lock. Is this how you treat your neighbours, you fusty old pirate?”
A murmur ran through the crowd on the bank. Jeff Pitt was the first to recognize the woman. She was known as Gipsy Joan, and her name was something of a legend even among villagers who had never ventured into her territory.
Jim Mole and Trouter stepped forward and bawled at her to be silent, but again she shouted them down. “Get your hooks out of our side! We’ve got wounded aboard.”
“Shut your gab, woman, and come ashore! Then you won’t get hurt,” Mole said, holding his sword at a more business-like angle. With the major at his side, he stepped towards the boat. Already some of the villagers had attempted to board without orders. Emboldened by the general lack of resistance and keen to get their share of the spoils, they dashed forward, led by two of the women. One of the oarsmen, a hoary old fellow with a sou’wester and a yellow beard, fell into a panic and brought his oar down on to the foremost boarder’s head. The woman went sprawling. A scuffle broke out immediately, despite bellowings from both parties to desist.
The cruiser rocked. The men holding the reindeer moved to protect themselves. Taking advantage of this distraction, the animal broke free of its captors. It clattered across the cabin roof, paused for a moment, and leapt overboard into the Thames. Swimming strongly, it headed downstream. A howl of dismay rose from the boat.
Two of the men who had been looking after the animal jumped in too, crying to the beast to come back. Then they were forced to look after themselves; one of them struggled to the bank, where there were hands to help him out. Down by the horns of the broken bridge, the reindeer climbed ashore, its water-smooth coat heavy against its flanks. It stood on the far shore snorting and shaking its head from side to side, as if troubled by water in its ears. Then it turned and disappeared into a clump of willows.
The second man who jumped in was less successful. He could not reach either bank. The current caught him, sweeping him through the bridge, across its submerged remains, over the weir. His thin cry rose. An arm was flung up amid spray, then there was only the roar of green and white water.
This incident damped the struggles at the boat, so that Mole and Trouter were able to question the crew. The two of them, standing by the cruiser’s rail, saw that Gipsy Joan had not been bluffing when she spoke of carrying wounded. Down in what was once the saloon were huddled nine men and women, some of them nonagenarians by their parched and sunken-eyed aspect. Their poor clothes were torn, their faces and hands bloody. One woman with half her face missing seemed on the point of death, while all maintained a stunned silence more terrible than screaming.