The Borrowers Afloat by Mary Norton

boat: there was a gentle rocking motion, which at first seemed rather pleasant, and then in her dream the boat began to spin. The spinning increased and the boat became a wheel, turning ... turning.... She clung to the spokes, which became like straw and broke away in her grasp. She clung to the rim, which opened outwards and seemed to fling her off, and a voice was calling again and again, "Wake up, Arrietty, wake up...."
    Dizzily she opened her eyes, and the kettle seemed full of a whirling half-light. It was morning, she realized, and someone had pulled the blanket from the spout. Close behind her she made out the outline of Pod; he seemed in some strange way to be glued to the side of the kettle. Opposite her she perceived the form of her mother, spreadeagled likewise in the same fixed, curious manner. She herself, half sitting, half lying, felt gripped by some dreamlike force.
    "We're afloat," cried Pod, "and spinning." And Arrietty, besides the kettle's spin, was aware of a dipping and swaying. "We've come adrift. We're in the current," he went on, "and going downstream fast...."
    "Oh, my..." moaned Homily, casting up her eyes. It was the only gesture she could make, stuck as she was like a fly to flypaper. But even as she spoke, the speed slackened and the spinning turns slowed down, and Arrietty watched her mother slide slowly down to a sitting position on the squelching, waterlogged floor. "Oh, my goodness..." Homily muttered again.
    Her voice, Arrietty noticed, sounded strangely audible: the rain had stopped at last.
    "I'm going to get the lid off," said Pod. He, too, as the kettle ceased twisting, had fallen forward to his knees and now rose slowly, steadying himself by a hand on the wall, against the swaying half-turns. "Give me a hand with the twine, Arrietty,"
    They pulled together. Water had seeped in past the cork in the rust hole and the floor was awash with sodden grass. As they pulled, they slid and slithered, but gradually the lid rose and above them they saw, at last, a circle of bright sky.
    "Oh, my goodness," Homily kept saying, and sometimes she changed it to, "Oh, my goodness me...." But she helped them stack up Pod's bundles. "We got to get out on deck like," Pod had insisted. "We don't stand a chance down below."
    It was a scramble: they used the twine, they used the hatpin, they used the banana, they used the bundles, and somehow—the kettle listing steeply—they climbed out on the rim to hot sunshine and a cloudless sky. Homily sat crouched, her arms gripped rightly round the stem of the arched handle, her legs dangling below. Arrietty sat beside her holding onto the rim. To lighten the weight, Pod cut the lid free and cast it overboard: they watched it float away.
    "...seems a waste," said Homily.

Chapter Sixteen
    The kettle turned slowly as it drifted—more gently now—downstream. The sun stood high in a brilliant sky: it was later than they had thought. The water looked muddy and yellowish after the recent storm, and in some places had overflowed the banks. To the right of them lay open fields and to the left a scrub of stunted willows and taller hazels. Above their heads golden lamb's tails trembled against the sky and armies of rushes marched down into the water.
    "Fetch up against the bank any minute now," said Pod hopefully, watching the flow of the stream. "One side or another," he added, "a kettle like this don't drift on forever...."
    "I should sincerely hope not," said Homily. She had slightly relaxed her grip on the handle and, interested in spite of herself, was gazing about her.
    Once they heard a bicycle bell, and some seconds later a policeman's helmet sailed past just above the level of the bushes. "Oh, my goodness," muttered Homily, "that means a footpath...."
    "Don't worry," said Pod. But Arrietty, glancing quickly at her father's face, saw he seemed perturbed.
    "He'd only have to glance sideways," Homily pointed out.
    "It's all right," said Pod, "he's gone now. And he