“There goes a big hawk, Tom. Look!” cried Dick, suddenly becoming interested in a broad-winged bird skimming along just over the surface of the fen; and this bird sufficed to change the conversation, which was getting unpleasant for Dick, till they came to the place where the men were hard at work on the huge ditch, the boggy earth from which, piled up as it was, serving to consolidate the sides and keep them from flooding the fen when the drain was full, and the high-tide prevented the water from coming out by the flood-gates at the end.
Mr Marston welcomed the lads warmly.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said.
“What is it—anything good?” cried Dick.
“That depends on taste, my boy. Come and see.”
He led the way along the black ridge of juicy peat, to where, in an oblique cutting running out from the main drain, a dozen men were at work, with their sharp spades cutting out great square bricks of peat, and clearing away the accumulations of hundreds of years from the sides of what at first appeared to be an enormous trunk of a tree, but which, upon closer inspection, drew forth from Dick a loud ejaculation.
“Why, it’s an old boat!” cried Tom.
“That it is, my lad.”
“But how did it come there?” cried Dick, gazing wonderingly at the black timber of the ancient craft.
“Who can tell, Dick? Perhaps it floated out of the river at some time when there was a flood, and it was too big to move back again, and the people in the days when it was used did not care to dig a canal from here to the river.”