“You see, Tom,” he whispered, “I think I was a little too particular. Good-night, Dave, and thank you!” he shouted.
“Good-night, lads—good-night!” came off the water. Then there was a splash of the pole, and Dave disappeared in the moonlit mist which silvered the reeds, while the boys trudged the rest of their way home.
Chapter Eight.
The Drain Progresses.
The number of workers increased at the sea-bank, quite a colony growing up, and Dick paid several visits to the place with his father to see how busily the men were delving, while others built up what was termed a gowt—a flood-gate arrangement for keeping out the sea at high water, and opening it at low, so as to give egress to the drain-water collected from the fen-land.
Both lads were eager enough to be there to witness the progress of the works at first; but after going again and again, they voted the whole thing to be uninteresting, and no more worth seeing than the digging of one of the ditches on the farms at home.
And certainly there was no more difference than in the fact that the ditches at home were five or six feet wide, while the one the adventurers were having cut through the fen-land would be forty feet, and proportionately deep.
So the big drain progressed foot by foot, creeping on as it were from the sea-shore, an innocent-looking channel that seemed valueless, but which would, when finished, rid the land of its stagnant water, and turn the boggy, peaty soil of the fen into rich pasture and corn-land, whereas its finest produce now was wild-fowl and a harvest of reeds.