Cattiwow unfastened the five wise horses from the tug. They cocked their ears forward, looked, and shook themselves.
‘I believe Sailor knows,’ Dan whispered to Una.
‘He do,’ said a man behind them. He was dressed in flour sacks like the others, and he leaned on his broad-axe, but the children, who knew all the wood gangs, knew he was a stranger. In his size and oily hairiness he might have been Bunny Lewknor’s brother, except that his brown eyes were as soft as a spaniel’s, and his rounded black beard, beginning close up under them, reminded Una of the walrus in The Walrus and the Carpenter.
‘Don’t he just about know?’ he said shyly, and shifted from one foot to the other.
‘Yes. “What Cattiwow can’t get out of the woods must have roots growing to her"’—Dan had heard old Hobden say this a few days before.
At that minute Puck pranced up, picking his way through the pools of black water in the ling.
‘Look out!’ cried Una, jumping forward. ‘He’ll see you, Puck!’
‘Me and Mus’ Robin are pretty middlin’ well acquainted,’ the man answered with a smile that made them forget all about walruses.
‘This is Simon Cheyneys,’ Puck began, and cleared his throat. ‘Shipbuilder of Rye Port; burgess of the said town, and the only——’
‘Oh, look! Look ye! That’s a knowing one,’ said the man. Cattiwow had fastened his team to the thin end of the log, and was moving them about with his whip till they stood at right angles to it, heading downhill. Then he grunted. The horses took the strain, beginning with Sailor next the log, like a tug-of-war team, and dropped almost to their knees. The log shifted a nail’s breadth in the clinging dirt, with the noise of a giant’s kiss.