Chapter 3: Messing About With Boats
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A/N: Birthday update! :D
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As far as unexpected turn of events via avoiding spring cleaning went, Mole thought, this certainly took the cake, the icing, and the whole bakery. Life among the Wild Wooders (and, on occasion, the wild wooders) was full of new sights to see and new lessons to learn and, somewhat alarmingly, new dangers to avoid. Through eagerness and sometimes necessity, he quickly became apt at spotting rotting trees prone to falling and the tell-tale hollows where abandoned mining openings were covered only by the thinnest layer of moss and dirt. He could navigate his way not through the absent sunlight, but by the roar of the Howling Rapids and the shifting scents and the tell-tale waymarkers, and only got lost during the first week no fewer than three times.
The Wild Wooders took to their strange new companion with a mixture of amusement and curiosity – and if they had any qualms about his addition, they knew better than to voice such thoughts where the Chief Weasel might overhear. But mostly qualms, unspoken or not, were few and far between, for the mole was enthusiastic and always friendly and, simply put, novel. Even Wild Wooders, it would seem, are not immune to the fascination of new friends.
In his letters to his mothers, Mole would gush about his experiences above-ground, touching on the type of topics known to draw maternal approval, such as new friends being made and proper precautions taken and yes, he was wearing the scarf they'd sent him last winter.
'I've even,' one letter went, 'been down to a river. I have not swum in it (although several of the weasels have assured me that the locals, known as Riverbankers, often do) but I have seen several of their boats up close, which seems the preferred mode of transport anyway.'
Naturally, he omitted that several of the boats had come away worse for wear after his seeing them 'up close'.
"It seems a shame," he said during one such excursion, "that the owner loses interest in these boats so quickly. They're all so well-made."
It was late evening and he and several other Wild Wooders had snuck their way into the boathouse of Toad Hall. He'd tried to catch a glimpse of the infamous hall itself on the way there, but a foggy haze had fallen so, even with his decent night vision, the building had been nothing more than a shadow in the distance.
His words garnered a snort from the Chief Weasel. "Try expensive. And they'll all rot here after he's forgotten 'em."
"So what we're doing is recycling them!" Lesser piped up. The nails he had been prising at finally came loose and a plank off the bow detached.
Cheryl cackled. "Yeah, for the fireplace!"
"Shush, would ya?" the Chief snapped. "Do you want us to get seen?"
"Sorry, Chief."
"Yeah, sorry, boss."
Duly chastised, Lesser sidled round to where Mole was industriously removing the canvas off the nigh-unused sailing boat (nigh-unused, save for the sizeable dent in its port hull that had been there even before the Wild Wooders had gotten their paws on it). Mole might have felt guilty for demolishing such once-fine vessels, if only there weren't so many in the same state of disinterest. Being of an underground nature (and now provisionally Wild Wooder), he had no hope of naming the vast array of boats that crowded the landing jetty, but even he could tell their owner had made little use of them before moving onto the next.
(If he had gleaned any boating experience – say, through the encounter of a water rat – he might have recognised punting boats, skiffs, sculls, coracles, pedalos, wager boats, one imported gondola and, naturally, a rowing boat. As things stood however, his boating experience extended as far as Boat, Oar, and How to Wreck One, and that had served him in good enough stead thus far.)
In fact, the only boat that still seemed to be in current use was a broad green boat (when asked what type it was, the Chief had answered with "Trouble") and even that sported a few bruises, presumably from bumpy encounters with the riverbank. The Chief had set his eyes on it immediately, and now not only did it have the proclamation "woozles woz here" (Mole wasn't sure if the misspelling was intentional or not, and he'd decided against asking) painted alongside its hull, but had also had its seat lowered just enough to be inconvenient and yet not overtly obvious.
Lesser leant over to Mole. "Mole. Psst. Mole."
Mole looked up from where he was intently detaching the sails. "What?" he whispered back.
"How do you tell a weasel from a stoat?"
"I don't know. How do you tell a weasel from a stoat?"
"One is weaselly recognisable, and the other is stoatally different."[x]
Mole snorted and Lesser's face lit up with glee. He gestured at Mole to Cheryl. "See? He thinks that joke is funny!"
"That's 'cause he's never heard it before, that's why!" she snapped back.
"Nah, it's cause he has a sense of humour!"
Any retort Cheryl was cut off as the Chief grabbed them both by their ears. "Would ya shut up?"
"Sorry, Chief," they chorused.
Scouting sensibly away from the reprimands, Mole skirted the landing jetty until he came to a little boat he'd previously overlooked.
The boat was remarkable in two ways that set it apart from its neighbours. First, in that it wasn't an eye-watering green, but an understated blue. And second, in that it was old and yet well-kept, two features that none of the grander boats around it could make claim to. Where time had tired the paint, its owner had taken pains to reapply it, and one of the boathooks was new that season. Even the seat cushions had been carefully resewn along the seams where they had begun to become loose.
It seemed a waste to lay waste to such an obviously well-loved boat, so instead of stealing the boathooks or jamming the tiller, his curiosity (the same curiosity that had set him to wander into the Wild Wood) led him to investigate it instead. He stepped from land to deck with only a single near mishap (he hoped the owner wouldn't mind too much that one oar had been knocked into the water) and admired the bobbing view of the dusk-lit river beyond.
He was just about to call out to his co-conspirers to take a look at the boating anomaly when the sound of approaching footsteps and an unfamiliar voice broke the relative peace.
"Right," the Chief hissed, "time for us to skedaddle."
And skedaddle they did, all save for the unfortunate mole who, despite having mastered (somewhat) the art of stepping into a boat, had quite failed to realise that stepping out of one required just as much balance, if not more, due to the innate motion of the vessel. Thus, when Mole went to scarper, his foot missed the jetty and, in windmilling for balance went straight through the boat's wooden seat instead.
He pulled his foot out of the splintered mess. "Oh dear."
The voice was reaching the boathouse's doors, so Mole did the only thing he could think of, which involved dragging the sailing boat's canvas over his head and squatting down in the belly of the little blue boat.
After all, there were at least a dozen water vessels there. What was the chances the animal would spare a second look his way?
"Ruddy – blasted – amphibian," the voice grumbled as it entered the building. "Thinking he can just call for me and I'll come running along on another ridiculous passing fad."
Mole stole a glance from beneath the sail and caught a glimpse of two animals. Now, he wasn't very familiar with the toad of Toad Hall – or any toads, in fact – but he was relatively sure that, as amphibians, they probably didn't possess fur, or whiskers, or a tail. In the threshold of the boathouse stood what Mole took to be a rabbit or hare (probably the former, given the Wild Wooders' comments about rabbits working for Toad) who was exuding a cloud of nervous energy.
"So what should I tell Mr Toad?" the rabbit asked.
The second animal, whose species threw Mole for a loop until he recalled water rats being included in the list of individuals who associated with Toad, snorted and continued his stormy pace. "You can tell Mr Toad that the only way he's going to get me to agree to his hare-brained 'open road' nonsense is if he hitches my boat to the back of his caravan before I realise what's going on." He froze. "On second thoughts, don't tell him that."
"Then what should I–"
"Just tell him no. It's one word, two letters; it should be simple enough even for him to understand."
"But Mr Toad–"
"Will do just fine in my absence," the water rat stressed. "He always does."
The rabbit gave a disgruntled harrumph, but left, presumably to deliver the short message back to the master of the house. Mole dropped back beneath the sail as the water rat continued his approach to the array of boats. Mole wondered whether the animal knew he was muttering beneath his breath.
"We barely see each other for months, and this is how he greets me?" the water rat groused. "Sure, sure, we'll just go caravanning off together as if the last lot of years never happened; that seems like a reasonable response to everything. The houseboat was bad enough, and that at least was on water. What made him think that I would ever – hello, what's this?"
With some horror, Mole realised that the water rat's steps had come to a halt right before the little blue boat he was using as a hiding spot. Thankfully, in all his irate mutterings, the water rat had evidently had not spared a glance for the other boats in their various states of disarray, but he couldn't fail to miss the sudden addition of a sail's worth of canvas flooding the blue boat before him.
The canvas rustled as the water rat started to pull the sail away, and Mole realised he only had at best a few seconds before he was discovered. Giving the most ear-splitting shriek he could manage (and, having spent some time with the Wild Wooders, he had become quite accustomed to cacophony) he erupted from the jumble of canvas, knocked the other oar (accidentally) into the water, and pushed past the shocked water rat.
It wasn't until Mole was safely out of the boathouse and reconvening with the Wild Wooders (who had lingered in the shadows at the edge of Toad's grounds after realising they were an animal down) that Mole discovered that, in all the chaos, the weasel mask had slipped down over his face.
He could only imagine what he had looked like to the rat.
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Rat was not having a good time of it.
Oh, the day had started off well enough, with a brisk spring dawn and fine weather for being out on the river, but then he'd made the mistake of passing by Toad Hall and once the occupant had spotted him then, well, it'd all gone downhill from there.
After several seasons of boating obsession, Rat had been prepared to be regaled with Toad's latest foray into all things boating (he had only hoped Toad had not yet turned his gaze upon steam boats) and was utterly nonplussed instead to be greeted with something with wheels. It'd taken him all afternoon and a good portion of the evening to eventually extract himself from Toad's usual attempts to rope him into accompanying him, and a thick fog had been settling by the time he was heading back to his boat and river.
And that would have been enough in of itself, only it turned out the day had one more trick up its sleeve in the form of Wild Wooders.
Several days later, he sat on the shoreline of the riverbank while mending his misused boat, and tried to relay exactly what he'd seen that evening.
"Obviously a Wild Wooder," he told Mrs Otter, who was seated a bit further up the bank and making good use of the picnic provided. "You should have seen the mess they'd made of Toad's boats – missing sails, torn hulls, graffiti–"
"Has Toad even noticed?" Mrs Otter asked.
"I – well, no, but that's not the point–"
"Unlikely to now either," she mused, "since he's off caravanning."
"Don't even get me started on that."
Mrs Otter didn't, since she'd already heard a few times (although she was gracious enough not to remind Ratty) all about Toad's endeavour to cajole his friend into joining him. "You were telling me about the Wild Wooders," she reminded him helpfully, in the friendly way of setting someone back on a rant that will do them good to get off their chest.
"Just the one I saw," Rat said, "although there probably were more. Where there's one, there's usually a pack somewhere close. It leapt out from my boat like a thing possessed, Mrs O, and nearly upset my boat in the process."
"A weasel?"
Rat wrinkled his whiskers. "I… maybe?"
"Maybe?" she echoed.
"I'm not sure."
"Then a stoat? They're pretty similar." Mrs Otter read the faltering silence. "Not a fox, surely; they usually do better than get caught in these things."
Rat attempted to recall the hazy memory, blurred by shock and fog. The creature he'd encountered certainly had possessed a weaselly look to the face – although it hadn't quite sat right; there had been an uncanny valley quality to it – and those kinds of trouble-causing shenanigans were undeniably right up the Wild Wooders' alley, but… He shook his head. Oftentimes, the simplest answer was the right answer, and he'd do no good brooding over it without any fresh evidence. "A weasel," he announced.
He returned to replacing the splintered seat and vowed the next time he encountered that weasel, he'd make them regret ever laying a paw on his father's boat.
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[x] A Quick Aside: The natural historian-at-heart might be intrigued to know that this joke is wholly unhelpful and should not be used as practical advice at all. In fact, discerning these two species is a far more subtle art, mostly because if evolution loves one thing, it's shaping small predators into the equivalent of a furry cardboard tube with legs – AKA weasels and stoats. (Actually, evolution loves two things: weasels and crabs, although strangely no weasel-crab has yet come to pass.) In reality, the average naturalist relies on differences in the tails of stoats and weasels (stoats possessing a white tip, while weasels have no markings at all) but since if you're close enough to see their tail, you're probably also close enough to get bitten, most animals fall back on the varying fashion choices and how insulted they get when identified as a stoat.)
(Most Riverbankers agree that it doesn't really matter whether you're encountering a stoat or weasel; they bite just the same.)
(And don't even ask about ferrets.)