The Project Gutenberg eBook of Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome (2024)

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome

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Title: Three Men in a Boat
(to say nothing of the dog)

Author: Jerome K. Jerome

Illustator: A. Frederics

Release Date: August 28, 1995 [eBook #308]
[Most recently updated: November 9, 2022]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: David Price and Margaret Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN IN A BOAT ***

by
JEROME K. JEROME

authorof
“idle thoughts of an idlefellow,”
“stage land,” etc.

Illustrations by A. Frederics.

BRISTOL
J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street

LONDON
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.Limited

1889
All rights reserved

PREFACE.

The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in itsliterary style, or in the extent and usefulness of theinformation it conveys, as in its simpletruthfulness. Its pages form the record of eventsthat really happened. All that has been done is tocolour them; and, for this, no extra chargehas been made. George and Harris and Montmorency arenot poetic ideals, but things of flesh andblood—especially George, who weighs about twelvestone. Other works may excel this in depth of thoughtand knowledge of human nature: other books may rival it inoriginality and size; but, for hopeless andincurable veracity, nothing yet discovered can surpassit. This, more than all its other charms,will, it is felt, make the volume precious inthe eye of the earnest reader; and will lend additionalweight to the lesson that the story teaches.

London, August, 1889.

CHAPTER I.

Three invalids.—Sufferings of George andHarris.—A victim to one hundred and seven fatalmaladies.—Useful prescriptions.—Cure for livercomplaint in children.—We agree that we are overworked, andneed rest.—A week on the rolling deep?—Georgesuggests the River.—Montmorency lodges anobjection.—Original motion carried by majority of three toone.

There were four of us—George, and William Samuel Harris,and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room,smoking, and talking about how bad we were—bad from amedical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervousabout it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits ofgiddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he wasdoing; and then George said that he had fits of giddinesstoo, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, itwas my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liverthat was out of order, because I had just been reading a patentliver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptomsby which a man could tell when his liver was out of order.I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patentmedicine advertisem*nt without being impelled to the conclusionthat I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealtwith in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems inevery case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that Ihave ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up thetreatment for some slight ailment of which I had atouch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book,and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, Iidly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases,generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plungedinto—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and,before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitorysymptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly gotit.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in thelistlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. Icame to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discoveredthat I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months withoutknowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St.Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had thattoo,—began to get interested in my case, and determined tosift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—readup ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that theacute stage would commence in about another fortnight.Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in amodified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might livefor years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; anddiphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I ploddedconscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the onlymalady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’sknee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow tobe a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I gothousemaid’s knee? Why this invidiousreservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelingsprevailed. I reflected that I had every other known maladyin the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined todo without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its mostmalignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my beingaware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with fromboyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so Iconcluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case Imust be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition Ishould be to a class! Students would have no need to“walk the hospitals,” if they had me. I was ahospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk roundme, and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried toexamine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at firstfeel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed tostart off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I madeit a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feelmy heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stoppedbeating. I have since been induced to come to the opinionthat it must have been there all the time, and must have beenbeating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself allover my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and Iwent a bit round each side, and a little way up the back.But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look atmy tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and Ishut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. Icould only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain fromthat was to feel more certain than before that I had scarletfever.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthyman. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, andfeels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about theweather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so Ithought I would do him a good turn by going to him now.“What a doctor wants,” I said, “ispractice. He shall have me. He will get more practiceout of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary,commonplace patients, with only one or two diseaseseach.” So I went straight up and saw him, and hesaid:

“Well, what’s the matter with you?”

I said:

“I will not take up your time, dear boy, with tellingyou what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and youmight pass away before I had finished. But I will tell youwhat is not the matter with me. I have not gothousemaid’s knee. Why I have not gothousemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remainsthat I have not got it. Everything else, however, Ihave got.”

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of mywrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’texpecting it—a cowardly thing to do, I call it—andimmediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head.After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and foldedit up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearestchemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, andthen handed it back.

He said he didn’t keep it.

I said:

“You are a chemist?”

He said:

“I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative storesand family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you.Being only a chemist hampers me.”

I read the prescription. It ran:

“1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer

every 6 hours.

1 ten-mile walk every morning.

1 bed at 11 sharp every night.

And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’tunderstand.”

I followed the directions, with the happyresult—speaking for myself—that my life waspreserved, and is still going on.

In the present instance, going back to the liver-pillcircular, I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief amongthem being “a general disinclination to work of anykind.”

What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From myearliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, thedisease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know,then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a farless advanced state than now, and they used to put it down tolaziness.

“Why, you skulking little devil, you,” they wouldsay, “get up and do something for your living, can’tyou?”—not knowing, of course, that I was ill.

And they didn’t give me pills; they gave me clumps onthe side of the head. And, strange as it may appear, thoseclumps on the head often cured me—for the time being.I have known one clump on the head have more effect upon myliver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight away then andthere, and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss oftime, than a whole box of pills does now.

You know, it often is so—those simple, old-fashionedremedies are sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensarystuff.

We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other ourmaladies. I explained to George and William Harris how Ifelt when I got up in the morning, and William Harris told us howhe felt when he went to bed; and George stood on the hearth-rug,and gave us a clever and powerful piece of acting, illustrativeof how he felt in the night.

George fancies he is ill; but there’s neveranything really the matter with him, you know.

At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door to know if wewere ready for supper. We smiled sadly at one another, andsaid we supposed we had better try to swallow a bit. Harrissaid a little something in one’s stomach often kept thedisease in check; and Mrs. Poppets brought the tray in, and wedrew up to the table, and toyed with a little steak and onions,and some rhubarb tart.

I must have been very weak at the time; because I know, afterthe first half-hour or so, I seemed to take no interest whateverin my food—an unusual thing for me—and I didn’twant any cheese.

This duty done, we refilled our glasses, lit our pipes, andresumed the discussion upon our state of health. What itwas that was actually the matter with us, we none of us could besure of; but the unanimous opinion was that it—whatever itwas—had been brought on by overwork.

“What we want is rest,” said Harris.

“Rest and a complete change,” said George.“The overstrain upon our brains has produced a generaldepression throughout the system. Change of scene, andabsence of the necessity for thought, will restore the mentalequilibrium.”

George has a cousin, who is usually described in thecharge-sheet as a medical student, so that he naturally has asomewhat family-physicianary way of putting things.

I agreed with George, and suggested that we should seek outsome retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, anddream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes—somehalf-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach ofthe noisy world—some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs ofTime, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth centurywould sound far-off and faint.

Harris said he thought it would be humpy. He said heknew the sort of place I meant; where everybody went to bed ateight o’clock, and you couldn’t get a Refereefor love or money, and had to walk ten miles to get yourbaccy.

“No,” said Harris, “if you want rest andchange, you can’t beat a sea trip.”

I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does yougood when you are going to have a couple of months of it, but,for a week, it is wicked.

You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom thatyou are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu tothe boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about thedeck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, andChristopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, youwish you hadn’t come. On Wednesday, Thursday, andFriday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are ableto swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answerwith a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how youfeel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, andtake solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bagand umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale, waiting tostep ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it.

I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea trip once,for the benefit of his health. He took a return berth fromLondon to Liverpool; and when he got to Liverpool, the only thinghe was anxious about was to sell that return ticket.

It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so Iam told; and was eventually sold for eighteenpence to abilious-looking youth who had just been advised by his medicalmen to go to the sea-side, and take exercise.

“Sea-side!” said my brother-in-law, pressing theticket affectionately into his hand; “why, you’llhave enough to last you a lifetime; and as for exercise! why,you’ll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship, thanyou would turning somersaults on dry land.”

He himself—my brother-in-law—came back bytrain. He said the North-Western Railway was healthy enoughfor him.

Another fellow I knew went for a week’s voyage round thecoast, and, before they started, the steward came to him to askwhether he would pay for each meal as he had it, or arrangebeforehand for the whole series.

The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come somuch cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole weekat two pounds five. He said for breakfast there would befish, followed by a grill. Lunch was at one, and consistedof four courses. Dinner at six—soup, fish, entree,joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert. And alight meat supper at ten.

My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job (heis a hearty eater), and did so.

Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. Hedidn’t feel so hungry as he thought he should, and socontented himself with a bit of boiled beef, and somestrawberries and cream. He pondered a good deal during theafternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had beeneating nothing but boiled beef for weeks, and at other times itseemed that he must have been living on strawberries and creamfor years.

Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy,either—seemed discontented like.

At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. Theannouncement aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt thatthere was some of that two-pound-five to be worked off, and heheld on to ropes and things and went down. A pleasant odourof onions and hot ham, mingled with fried fish and greens,greeted him at the bottom of the ladder; and then the stewardcame up with an oily smile, and said:

“What can I get you, sir?”

“Get me out of this,” was the feeble reply.

And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over toleeward, and left him.

For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life onthin captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits werethin, not the captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, hegot uppish, and went in for weak tea and dry toast, and on Mondayhe was gorging himself on chicken broth. He left the shipon Tuesday, and as it steamed away from the landing-stage hegazed after it regretfully.

“There she goes,” he said, “there she goes,with two pounds’ worth of food on board that belongs to me,and that I haven’t had.”

He said that if they had given him another day he thought hecould have put it straight.

So I set my face against the sea trip. Not, as Iexplained, upon my own account. I was never queer.But I was afraid for George. George said he should be allright, and would rather like it, but he would advise Harris andme not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both beill. Harris said that, to himself, it was always a mysteryhow people managed to get sick at sea—said he thoughtpeople must do it on purpose, from affectation—said he hadoften wished to be, but had never been able.

Then he told us anecdotes of how he had gone across theChannel when it was so rough that the passengers had to be tiedinto their berths, and he and the captain were the only twoliving souls on board who were not ill. Sometimes it was heand the second mate who were not ill; but it was generally he andone other man. If not he and another man, then it was he byhimself.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick—onland. At sea, you come across plenty of people very badindeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, onland, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick.Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm inevery ship hide themselves when they are on land is amystery.

If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat oneday, I could account for the seeming enigma easily enough.It was just off Southend Pier, I recollect, and he was leaningout through one of the port-holes in a very dangerousposition. I went up to him to try and save him.

“Hi! come further in,” I said, shaking him by theshoulder. “You’ll be overboard.”

“Oh my! I wish I was,” was the only answer I couldget; and there I had to leave him.

Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee-room of a Bathhotel, talking about his voyages, and explaining, withenthusiasm, how he loved the sea.

“Good sailor!” he replied in answer to a mildyoung man’s envious query; “well, I did feel a littlequeer once, I confess. It was off Cape Horn.The vessel was wrecked the next morning.”

I said:

“Weren’t you a little shaky by Southend Pier oneday, and wanted to be thrown overboard?”

“Southend Pier!” he replied, with a puzzledexpression.

“Yes; going down to Yarmouth, last Friday threeweeks.”

“Oh, ah—yes,” he answered, brightening up;“I remember now. I did have a headache thatafternoon. It was the pickles, you know. They werethe most disgraceful pickles I ever tasted in a respectableboat. Did you have any?”

For myself, I have discovered an excellent preventive againstsea-sickness, in balancing myself. You stand in the centreof the deck, and, as the ship heaves and pitches, you move yourbody about, so as to keep it always straight. When thefront of the ship rises, you lean forward, till the deck almosttouches your nose; and when its back end gets up, you leanbackwards. This is all very well for an hour or two; butyou can’t balance yourself for a week.

George said:

“Let’s go up the river.”

He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet; theconstant change of scene would occupy our minds (including whatthere was of Harris’s); and the hard work would give us agood appetite, and make us sleep well.

Harris said he didn’t think George ought to do anythingthat would have a tendency to make him sleepier than he alwayswas, as it might be dangerous. He said he didn’t verywell understand how George was going to sleep any more than hedid now, seeing that there were only twenty-four hours in eachday, summer and winter alike; but thought that if he didsleep any more, he might just as well be dead, and so save hisboard and lodging.

Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a“T.” I don’t know what a “T”is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and-butter andcake ad lib., and is cheap at the price, if youhaven’t had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody,however, which is greatly to its credit.

It suited me to a “T” too, and Harris and I bothsaid it was a good idea of George’s; and we said it in atone that seemed to somehow imply that we were surprised thatGeorge should have come out so sensible.

The only one who was not struck with the suggestion wasMontmorency. He never did care for the river, didMontmorency.

“It’s all very well for you fellows,” hesays; “you like it, but I don’t.There’s nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in myline, and I don’t smoke. If I see a rat, youwon’t stop; and if I go to sleep, you get fooling aboutwith the boat, and slop me overboard. If you ask me, I callthe whole thing bally foolishness.”

We were three to one, however, and the motion was carried.

CHAPTER II.

Plans discussed.—Pleasures of“camping-out,” on fine nights.—Ditto, wetnights.—Compromise decided on.—Montmorency, firstimpressions of.—Fears lest he is too good for this world,fears subsequently dismissed as groundless.—Meetingadjourns.

We pulled out the maps, and discussed plans.

We arranged to start on the following Saturday fromKingston. Harris and I would go down in the morning, andtake the boat up to Chertsey, and George, who would not be ableto get away from the City till the afternoon (George goes tosleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, whenthey wake him up and put him outside at two), would meet usthere.

Should we “camp out” or sleep at inns?

George and I were for camping out. We said it would beso wild and free, so patriarchal like.

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the heartsof the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children,the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen’splaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awedhush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes outher last.

From the dim woods on either bank, Night’s ghostly army,the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase awaythe lingering rear-guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless,unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through thesighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds herblack wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantompalace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness.

Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the tentis pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten. Thenthe big pipes are filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goesround in musical undertone; while, in the pauses of our talk, theriver, playing round the boat, prattles strange old tales andsecrets, sings low the old child’s song that it has sung somany thousand years—will sing so many thousand years tocome, before its voice grows harsh and old—a song that we,who have learnt to love its changing face, who have so oftennestled on its yielding bosom, think, somehow, we understand,though we could not tell you in mere words the story that welisten to.

And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves ittoo, stoops down to kiss it with a sister’s kiss, andthrows her silver arms around it clingingly; and we watch it asit flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king,the sea—till our voices die away in silence, and the pipesgo out—till we, common-place, everyday young men enough,feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do notcare or want to speak—till we laugh, and, rising, knock theashes from our burnt-out pipes, and say “Good-night,”and, lulled by the lapping water and the rustling trees, we fallasleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the worldis young again—young and sweet as she used to be ere thecenturies of fret and care had furrowed her fair face, ere herchildren’s sins and follies had made old her lovingheart—sweet as she was in those bygone days when, anew-made mother, she nursed us, her children, upon her own deepbreast—ere the wiles of painted civilization had lured usaway from her fond arms, and the poisoned sneers of artificialityhad made us ashamed of the simple life we led with her, and thesimple, stately home where mankind was born so many thousandsyears ago.

Harris said:

“How about when it rained?”

You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry aboutHarris—no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harrisnever “weeps, he knows not why.” IfHarris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is becauseHarris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcesterover his chop.

If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris,and say:

“Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaidssinging deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chantingdirges for white corpses, held by seaweed?” Harriswould take you by the arm, and say:

“I know what it is, old man; you’ve got achill. Now, you come along with me. I know a placeround the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finestScotch whisky you ever tasted—put you right in less than notime.”

Harris always does know a place round the corner where you canget something brilliant in the drinking line. I believethat if you met Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thinglikely), he would immediately greet you with:

“So glad you’ve come, old fellow; I’ve founda nice place round the corner here, where you can get some reallyfirst-class nectar.”

In the present instance, however, as regarded the camping out,his practical view of the matter came as a very timelyhint. Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant.

It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a goodtwo inches of water in the boat, and all the things aredamp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite sopuddly as other places you have seen, and you land and lug outthe tent, and two of you proceed to fix it.

It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles downon you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. Therain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficultenough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomesherculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that theother man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get yourside beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, andspoils it all.

“Here! what are you up to?” you call out.

“What are you up to?” he retorts;“leggo, can’t you?”

“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, youstupid ass!” you shout.

“No, I haven’t,” he yells back; “letgo your side!”

“I tell you you’ve got it all wrong!” youroar, wishing that you could get at him; and you give your ropesa lug that pulls all his pegs out.

“Ah, the bally idiot!” you hear him mutter tohimself; and then comes a savage haul, and away goes yourside. You lay down the mallet and start to go round andtell him what you think about the whole business, and, at thesame time, he starts round in the same direction to come andexplain his views to you. And you follow each other roundand round, swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles downin a heap, and leaves you looking at each other across its ruins,when you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:

“There you are! what did I tell you?”

Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out the boat, andwho has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursingaway to himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to knowwhat the thundering blazes you’re playing at, and why theblarmed tent isn’t up yet.

At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land thethings. It is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, soyou light the methylated spirit stove, and crowd round that.

Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. Thebread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedinglyrich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and thecoffee have all combined with it to make soup.

After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannotsmoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheersand inebriates, if taken in proper quantity, and this restores toyou sufficient interest in life to induce you to go to bed.

There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on yourchest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down tothe bottom of the sea—the elephant still sleepingpeacefully on your bosom. You wake up and grasp the ideathat something terrible really has happened. Your firstimpression is that the end of the world has come; and then youthink that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers,or else fire, and this opinion you express in the usualmethod. No help comes, however, and all you know is thatthousands of people are kicking you, and you are beingsmothered.

Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear hisfaint cries coming from underneath your bed. Determining,at all events, to sell your life dearly, you strugglefrantically, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, andyelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, andyou find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, youdimly observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, andyou are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when itbegins to dawn upon you that it’s Jim.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he says, recognisingyou at the same moment.

“Yes,” you answer, rubbing your eyes;“what’s happened?”

“Bally tent’s blown down, I think,” hesays. “Where’s Bill?”

Then you both raise up your voices and shout for“Bill!” and the ground beneath you heaves and rocks,and the muffled voice that you heard before replies from out theruin:

“Get off my head, can’t you?”

And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in anunnecessarily aggressive mood—he being under the evidentbelief that the whole thing has been done on purpose.

In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to havingcaught severe colds in the night; you also feel very quarrelsome,and you swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the wholeof breakfast time.

We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights;and hotel it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks,when it was wet, or when we felt inclined for a change.

Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval.He does not revel in romantic solitude. Give him somethingnoisy; and if a trifle low, so much the jollier. To look atMontmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon theearth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of asmall fox-terrier. There is a sort ofOh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-noblerexpression about Montmorency that has been known to bring thetears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.

When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought Ishould be able to get him to stop long. I used to sit downand look at him, as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, andthink: “Oh, that dog will never live. He will besnatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is what willhappen to him.”

But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he hadkilled; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruffof his neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and hadhad a dead cat brought round for my inspection by an iratefemale, who called me a murderer; and had been summoned by theman next door but one for having a ferocious dog at large, thathad kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to venturehis nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; andhad learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirtyshillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I beganto think that maybe they’d let him remain on earth for abit longer, after all.

To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the mostdisreputable dogs to be found in the town, and lead them out tomarch round the slums to fight other disreputable dogs, isMontmorency’s idea of “life;” and so, as Ibefore observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs.,and hotels his most emphatic approbation.

Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to thesatisfaction of all four of us, the only thing left to discusswas what we should take with us; and this we had begun to argue,when Harris said he’d had enough oratory for one night, andproposed that we should go out and have a smile, saying that hehad found a place, round by the square, where you could reallyget a drop of Irish worth drinking.

George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when hedidn’t); and, as I had a presentiment that a little whisky,warm, with a slice of lemon, would do my complaint good, thedebate was, by common assent, adjourned to the following night;and the assembly put on its hats and went out.

CHAPTER III.

Arrangements settled.—Harris’smethod of doing work.—How the elderly, family-man puts up apicture.—George makes a sensible, remark.—Delights ofearly morning bathing.—Provisions for getting upset.

So, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discussand arrange our plans. Harris said:

“Now, the first thing to settle is what to take withus. Now, you get a bit of paper and write down, J., and youget the grocery catalogue, George, and somebody give me a bit ofpencil, and then I’ll make out a list.”

That’s Harris all over—so ready to take the burdenof everything himself, and put it on the backs of otherpeople.

He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You neversaw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, aswhen my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture wouldhave come home from the frame-maker’s, and be standing inthe dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would askwhat was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:

“Oh, you leave that to me. Don’t you,any of you, worry yourselves about that. I’lldo all that.”

And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He wouldsend the girl out for sixpen’orth of nails, and then one ofthe boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that,he would gradually work down, and start the whole house.

“Now you go and get me my hammer, Will,” he wouldshout; “and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall wantthe step-ladder, and I had better have a kitchen-chair, too; and,Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles, and tell him,‘Pa’s kind regards, and hopes his leg’s better;and will he lend him his spirit-level?’ Anddon’t you go, Maria, because I shall want somebody to holdme the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out againfor a bit of picture-cord; and Tom!—where’sTom?—Tom, you come here; I shall want you to hand me up thepicture.”

And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and itwould come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass,and cut himself; and then he would spring round the room, lookingfor his handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief,because it was in the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and hedid not know where he had put the coat, and all the house had toleave off looking for his tools, and start looking for his coat;while he would dance round and hinder them.

“Doesn’t anybody in the whole house know where mycoat is? I never came across such a set in all mylife—upon my word I didn’t. Six ofyou!—and you can’t find a coat that I put down notfive minutes ago! Well, of all the—”

Then he’d get up, and find that he had been sitting onit, and would call out:

“Oh, you can give it up! I’ve found itmyself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anythingas expect you people to find it.”

And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his finger,and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, andthe chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have anothergo, the whole family, including the girl and the charwoman,standing round in a semi-circle, ready to help. Two peoplewould have to hold the chair, and a third would help him up onit, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand him a nail, and afifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold of thenail, and drop it.

“There!” he would say, in an injured tone,“now the nail’s gone.”

And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel forit, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want toknow if he was to be kept there all the evening.

The nail would be found at last, but by that time he wouldhave lost the hammer.

“Where’s the hammer? What did I do with thehammer? Great heavens! Seven of you, gaping roundthere, and you don’t know what I did with thehammer!”

We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have lostsight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was togo in, and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, andsee if we could find it; and we would each discover it in adifferent place, and he would call us all fools, one afteranother, and tell us to get down. And he would take therule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one andthree-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it inhis head, and go mad.

And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive atdifferent results, and sneer at one another. And in thegeneral row, the original number would be forgotten, and UnclePodger would have to measure it again.

He would use a bit of string this time, and at the criticalmoment, when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angleof forty-five, and trying to reach a point three inches beyondwhat was possible for him to reach, the string would slip, anddown he would slide on to the piano, a really fine musical effectbeing produced by the suddenness with which his head and bodystruck all the notes at the same time.

And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the childrento stand round and hear such language.

At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and putthe point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take thehammer in his right hand. And, with the first blow, hewould smash his thumb, and drop the hammer, with a yell, onsomebody’s toes.

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podgerwas going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he’dlet her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to goand spend a week with her mother while it was being done.

“Oh! you women, you make such a fuss overeverything,” Uncle Podger would reply, picking himselfup. “Why, I like doing a little job of thissort.”

And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow,the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammerafter it, and Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall withforce nearly sufficient to flatten his nose.

Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a newhole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would beup—very crooked and insecure, the wall for yards roundlooking as if it had been smoothed down with a rake, andeverybody dead beat and wretched—except Uncle Podger.

“There you are,” he would say, stepping heavilyoff the chair on to the charwoman’s corns, and surveyingthe mess he had made with evident pride. “Why, somepeople would have had a man in to do a little thing likethat!”

Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I know,and I told him so. I said I could not permit him to take somuch labour upon himself. I said:

“No; you get the paper, and the pencil, and thecatalogue, and George write down, and I’ll do thework.”

The first list we made out had to be discarded. It wasclear that the upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of thenavigation of a boat sufficiently large to take the things we hadset down as indispensable; so we tore the list up, and looked atone another!

George said:

“You know we are on a wrong track altogether. Wemust not think of the things we could do with, but only of thethings that we can’t do without.”

George comes out really quite sensible at times.You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, notmerely as regards the present case, but with reference to ourtrip up the river of life, generally. How many people, onthat voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger ofswamping with a store of foolish things which they thinkessential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which arereally only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fineclothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host ofswell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that theydo not care three ha’pence for; with expensiveentertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions,with pretence and ostentation, and with—oh, heaviest,maddest lumber of all!—the dread of what will my neighbourthink, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore,with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown ofyore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man—all lumber! Throw itoverboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearlyfaint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerousto manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxietyand care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamylaziness—no time to watch the windy shadows skimminglightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeamsflitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by themargin looking down at their own image, or the woods all greenand golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-wavingrushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blueforget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life belight, packed with only what you need—a homely home andsimple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone tolove and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two,enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enoughto drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not beso liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it doesupset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You willhave time to think as well as to work. Time to drink inlife’s sunshine—time to listen to the Æolianmusic that the wind of God draws from the human heart-stringsaround us—time to—

I beg your pardon, really. I quite forgot.

Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.

“We won’t take a tent,” suggested George;“we will have a boat with a cover. It is ever so muchsimpler, and more comfortable.”

It seemed a good thought, and we adopted it. I do notknow whether you have ever seen the thing I mean. You fixiron hoops up over the boat, and stretch a huge canvas over them,and fasten it down all round, from stem to stern, and it convertsthe boat into a sort of little house, and it is beautifully cosy,though a trifle stuffy; but there, everything has its drawbacks,as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came downupon him for the funeral expenses.

George said that in that case we must take a rug each, a lamp,some soap, a brush and comb (between us), a toothbrush (each), abasin, some tooth-powder, some shaving tackle (sounds like aFrench exercise, doesn’t it?), and a couple of big-towelsfor bathing. I notice that people always make giganticarrangements for bathing when they are going anywhere near thewater, but that they don’t bathe much when they arethere.

It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I alwaysdetermine—when thinking over the matter inLondon—that I’ll get up early every morning, and goand have a dip before breakfast, and I religiously pack up a pairof drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathingdrawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. Theysuit my complexion so. But when I get to the sea Idon’t feel somehow that I want that early morning bathenearly so much as I did when I was in town.

On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed tillthe last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast.Once or twice virtue has triumphed, and I have got out at six andhalf-dressed myself, and have taken my drawers and towel, andstumbled dismally off. But I haven’t enjoyedit. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind,waiting for me, when I go to bathe in the early morning; and theypick out all the three-cornered stones, and put them on the top,and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with abit of sand so that I can’t see them, and they take the seaand put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle myself up inmy arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water.And when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quiteinsulting.

One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sittingposture, as hard as ever it can, down on to a rock which has beenput there for me. And, before I’ve said “Oh!Ugh!” and found out what has gone, the wave comes back andcarries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike outfrantically for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see homeand friends again, and wish I’d been kinder to my littlesister when a boy (when I was a boy, I mean). Just when Ihave given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me sprawlinglike a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and findthat I’ve been swimming for my life in two feet ofwater. I hop back and dress, and crawl home, where I haveto pretend I liked it.

In the present instance, we all talked as if we were going tohave a long swim every morning.

George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in thefresh morning, and plunge into the limpid river. Harrissaid there was nothing like a swim before breakfast to give youan appetite. He said it always gave him an appetite.George said that if it was going to make Harris eat more thanHarris ordinarily ate, then he should protest against Harrishaving a bath at all.

He said there would be quite enough hard work in towingsufficient food for Harris up against stream, as it was.

I urged upon George, however, how much pleasanter it would beto have Harris clean and fresh about the boat, even if we didhave to take a few more hundredweight of provisions; and he gotto see it in my light, and withdrew his opposition toHarris’s bath.

Agreed, finally, that we should take three bath towels,so as not to keep each other waiting.

For clothes, George said two suits of flannel would besufficient, as we could wash them ourselves, in the river, whenthey got dirty. We asked him if he had ever tried washingflannels in the river, and he replied: “No, not exactlyhimself like; but he knew some fellows who had, and it was easyenough;” and Harris and I were weak enough to fancy he knewwhat he was talking about, and that three respectable young men,without position or influence, and with no experience in washing,could really clean their own shirts and trousers in the riverThames with a bit of soap.

We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late,that George was a miserable impostor, who could evidently haveknown nothing whatever about the matter. If you had seenthese clothes after—but, as the shilling shockers say, weanticipate.

George impressed upon us to take a change of under-things andplenty of socks, in case we got upset and wanted a change; alsoplenty of handkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and apair of leather boots as well as our boating shoes, as we shouldwant them if we got upset.

CHAPTER IV.

The food question.—Objections toparaffine oil as an atmosphere.—Advantages of cheese as atravelling companion.—A married woman deserts herhome.—Further provision for getting upset.—Ipack.—Cussedness of tooth-brushes.—George and Harrispack.—Awful behaviour of Montmorency.—We retire torest.

Then we discussed the food question. George said:

“Begin with breakfast.” (George is sopractical.) “Now for breakfast we shall want afrying-pan”—(Harris said it was indigestible; but wemerely urged him not to be an ass, and George wenton)—“a tea-pot and a kettle, and a methylated spiritstove.”

“No oil,” said George, with a significant look;and Harris and I agreed.

We had taken up an oil-stove once, but “neveragain.” It had been like living in an oil-shop thatweek. It oozed. I never saw such a thing as paraffineoil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and,from there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the wholeboat and everything in it on its way, and it oozed over theriver, and saturated the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere.Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times aneasterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind,and maybe a southerly oily wind; but whether it came from theArctic snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands, itcame alike to us laden with the fragrance of paraffine oil.

And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for themoonbeams, they positively reeked of paraffine.

We tried to get away from it at Marlow. We left the boatby the bridge, and took a walk through the town to escape it, butit followed us. The whole town was full of oil. Wepassed through the church-yard, and it seemed as if the peoplehad been buried in oil. The High Street stunk of oil; wewondered how people could live in it. And we walked milesupon miles out Birmingham way; but it was no use, the country wassteeped in oil.

At the end of that trip we met together at midnight in alonely field, under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath (we hadbeen swearing for a whole week about the thing in an ordinary,middle-class way, but this was a swell affair)—an awfuloath never to take paraffine oil with us in a boat again-except,of course, in case of sickness.

Therefore, in the present instance, we confined ourselves tomethylated spirit. Even that is bad enough. You getmethylated pie and methylated cake. But methylated spiritis more wholesome when taken into the system in large quantitiesthan paraffine oil.

For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon,which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, andjam. For lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat,bread and butter, and jam—but no cheese.Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants thewhole boat to itself. It goes through the hamper, and givesa cheesy flavour to everything else there. You can’ttell whether you are eating apple-pie or German sausage, orstrawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There istoo much odour about cheese.

I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses atLiverpool. Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, andwith a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might havebeen warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at twohundred yards. I was in Liverpool at the time, and myfriend said that if I didn’t mind he would get me to takethem back with me to London, as he should not be coming up for aday or two himself, and he did not think the cheeses ought to bekept much longer.

“Oh, with pleasure, dear boy,” I replied,“with pleasure.”

I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab.It was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed,broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment ofenthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. Iput the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble thatwould have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built,and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned thecorner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheesesfull on to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort ofterror, he dashed off at three miles an hour. The windstill blew in his direction, and before we reached the end of thestreet he was laying himself out at the rate of nearly four milesan hour, leaving the cripples and stout old ladies simplynowhere.

It took two porters as well as the driver to hold him in atthe station; and I do not think they would have done it, eventhen, had not one of the men had the presence of mind to put ahandkerchief over his nose, and to light a bit of brownpaper.

I took my ticket, and marched proudly up the platform, with mycheeses, the people falling back respectfully on eitherside. The train was crowded, and I had to get into acarriage where there were already seven other people. Onecrusty old gentleman objected, but I got in, notwithstanding;and, putting my cheeses upon the rack, squeezed down with apleasant smile, and said it was a warm day.

A few moments passed, and then the old gentleman began tofidget.

“Very close in here,” he said.

“Quite oppressive,” said the man next him.

And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff,they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without anotherword and went out. And then a stout lady got up, and saidit was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should beharried about in this way, and gathered up a bag and eightparcels and went. The remaining four passengers sat on fora while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from hisdress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the undertakerclass, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and the other threepassengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, andhurt themselves.

I smiled at the black gentleman, and said I thought we weregoing to have the carriage to ourselves; and he laughedpleasantly, and said that some people made such a fuss over alittle thing. But even he grew strangely depressed after wehad started, and so, when we reached Crewe, I asked him to comeand have a drink. He accepted, and we forced our way intothe buffet, where we yelled, and stamped, and waved our umbrellasfor a quarter of an hour; and then a young lady came, and askedus if we wanted anything.

“What’s yours?” I said, turning to myfriend.

“I’ll have half-a-crown’s worth of brandy,neat, if you please, miss,” he responded.

And he went off quietly after he had drunk it and got intoanother carriage, which I thought mean.

From Crewe I had the compartment to myself, though the trainwas crowded. As we drew up at the different stations, thepeople, seeing my empty carriage, would rush for it.“Here y’ are, Maria; come along, plenty ofroom.” “All right, Tom; we’ll get inhere,” they would shout. And they would run along,carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get infirst. And one would open the door and mount the steps, andstagger back into the arms of the man behind him; and they wouldall come and have a sniff, and then droop off and squeeze intoother carriages, or pay the difference and go first.

From Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend’shouse. When his wife came into the room she smelt round foran instant. Then she said:

“What is it? Tell me the worst.”

I said:

“It’s cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool,and asked me to bring them up with me.”

And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing todo with me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that shewould speak to Tom about it when he came back.

My friend was detained in Liverpool longer than he expected;and, three days later, as he hadn’t returned home, his wifecalled on me. She said:

“What did Tom say about those cheeses?”

I replied that he had directed they were to be kept in a moistplace, and that nobody was to touch them.

She said:

“Nobody’s likely to touch them. Had he smeltthem?”

I thought he had, and added that he seemed greatly attached tothem.

“You think he would be upset,” she queried,“if I gave a man a sovereign to take them away and burythem?”

I answered that I thought he would never smile again.

An idea struck her. She said:

“Do you mind keeping them for him? Let me sendthem round to you.”

“Madam,” I replied, “for myself I like thesmell of cheese, and the journey the other day with them fromLiverpool I shall ever look back upon as a happy ending to apleasant holiday. But, in this world, we must considerothers. The lady under whose roof I have the honour ofresiding is a widow, and, for all I know, possibly an orphantoo. She has a strong, I may say an eloquent, objection tobeing what she terms ‘put upon.’ The presenceof your husband’s cheeses in her house she would, Iinstinctively feel, regard as a ‘put upon’; and itshall never be said that I put upon the widow and theorphan.”

“Very well, then,” said my friend’s wife,rising, “all I have to say is, that I shall take thechildren and go to an hotel until those cheeses are eaten.I decline to live any longer in the same house withthem.”

She kept her word, leaving the place in charge of thecharwoman, who, when asked if she could stand the smell, replied,“What smell?” and who, when taken close to thecheeses and told to sniff hard, said she could detect a faintodour of melons. It was argued from this that little injurycould result to the woman from the atmosphere, and she wasleft.

The hotel bill came to fifteen guineas; and my friend, afterreckoning everything up, found that the cheeses had cost himeight-and-sixpence a pound. He said he dearly loved a bitof cheese, but it was beyond his means; so he determined to getrid of them. He threw them into the canal; but had to fishthem out again, as the bargemen complained. They said itmade them feel quite faint. And, after that, he took themone dark night and left them in the parish mortuary. Butthe coroner discovered them, and made a fearful fuss.

He said it was a plot to deprive him of his living by wakingup the corpses.

My friend got rid of them, at last, by taking them down to asea-side town, and burying them on the beach. It gained theplace quite a reputation. Visitors said they had nevernoticed before how strong the air was, and weak-chested andconsumptive people used to throng there for years afterwards.

Fond as I am of cheese, therefore, I hold that George wasright in declining to take any.

“We shan’t want any tea,” said George(Harris’s face fell at this); “but we’ll have agood round, square, slap-up meal at seven—dinner, tea, andsupper combined.”

Harris grew more cheerful. George suggested meat andfruit pies, cold meat, tomatoes, fruit, and green stuff.For drink, we took some wonderful sticky concoction ofHarris’s, which you mixed with water and called lemonade,plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as George said,we got upset.

It seemed to me that George harped too much on thegetting-upset idea. It seemed to me the wrong spirit to goabout the trip in.

But I’m glad we took the whisky.

We didn’t take beer or wine. They are a mistake upthe river. They make you feel sleepy and heavy. Aglass in the evening when you are doing a mouch round the townand looking at the girls is all right enough; but don’tdrink when the sun is blazing down on your head, and you’vegot hard work to do.

We made a list of the things to be taken, and a pretty lengthyone it was, before we parted that evening. The next day,which was Friday, we got them all together, and met in theevening to pack. We got a big Gladstone for the clothes,and a couple of hampers for the victuals and the cookingutensils. We moved the table up against the window, piledeverything in a heap in the middle of the floor, and sat roundand looked at it.

I said I’d pack.

I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one ofthose many things that I feel I know more about than any otherperson living. (It surprises me myself, sometimes, how manyof these subjects there are.) I impressed the fact uponGeorge and Harris, and told them that they had better leave thewhole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestionwith a readiness that had something uncanny about it.George put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy-chair, andHarris co*cked his legs on the table and lit a cigar.

This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, ofcourse, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris andGeorge should potter about under my directions, I pushing themaside every now and then with, “Oh,you—!” “Here, let me do it.”“There you are, simple enough!”—really teachingthem, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they didirritated me. There is nothing does irritate me more thanseeing other people sitting about doing nothing when I’mworking.

I lived with a man once who used to make me mad thatway. He would loll on the sofa and watch me doing things bythe hour together, following me round the room with his eyes,wherever I went. He said it did him real good to look on atme, messing about. He said it made him feel that life wasnot an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a nobletask, full of duty and stern work. He said he oftenwondered now how he could have gone on before he met me, neverhaving anybody to look at while they worked.

Now, I’m not like that. I can’t sit stilland see another man slaving and working. I want to get upand superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, andtell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. Ican’t help it.

However, I did not say anything, but started thepacking. It seemed a longer job than I had thought it wasgoing to be; but I got the bag finished at last, and I sat on itand strapped it.

“Ain’t you going to put the boots in?” saidHarris.

And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them.That’s just like Harris. He couldn’t have saida word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, ofcourse. And George laughed—one of those irritating,senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. Theydo make me so wild.

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as Iwas going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. HadI packed my tooth-brush? I don’t know how it is, butI never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.

My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’mtravelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that Ihaven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, andget out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I packit before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, andit is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then Irepack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at thelast moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in mypocket-handkerchief.

Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, ofcourse, I could not find it. I rummaged the things up intomuch the same state that they must have been before the world wascreated, and when chaos reigned. Of course, I foundGeorge’s and Harris’s eighteen times over, but Icouldn’t find my own. I put the things back one byone, and held everything up and shook it. Then I found itinside a boot. I repacked once more.

When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in. Isaid I didn’t care a hang whether the soap was in orwhether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag to and strappedit, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch in it, and hadto re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.05 p.m., andthen there remained the hampers to do. Harris said that weshould be wanting to start in less than twelve hours’ time,and thought that he and George had better do the rest; and Iagreed and sat down, and they had a go.

They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending toshow me how to do it. I made no comment; I onlywaited. When George is hanged, Harris will be the worstpacker in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates andcups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves,and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing wouldsoon become exciting.

It did. They started with breaking a cup. That wasthe first thing they did. They did that just to show youwhat they could do, and to get you interested.

Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato andsquashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with ateaspoon.

And then it was George’s turn, and he trod on thebutter. I didn’t say anything, but I came over andsat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritatedthem more than anything I could have said. I feltthat. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped onthings, and put things behind them, and then couldn’t findthem when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at thebottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.

They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter!I never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butterin my whole life than they did. After George had got it offhis slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. Itwouldn’t go in, and what was in wouldn’t comeout. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on achair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they wentlooking for it all over the room.

“I’ll take my oath I put it down on thatchair,” said George, staring at the empty seat.

“I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago,” saidHarris.

Then they started round the room again looking for it; andthen they met again in the centre, and stared at one another.

“Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” saidGeorge.

“So mysterious!” said Harris.

Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.

“Why, here it is all the time,” he exclaimed,indignantly.

“Where?” cried Harris, spinning round.

“Stand still, can’t you!” roared George,flying after him.

And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.

Montmorency was in it all, of course.Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and besworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where heparticularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and makepeople mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels hisday has not been wasted.

To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadilyfor an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he hassucceeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quiteunbearable.

He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanted tobe packed; and he laboured under the fixed belief that, wheneverHarris or George reached out their hand for anything, it was hiscold, damp nose that they wanted. He put his leg into thejam, and he worried the teaspoons, and he pretended that thelemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three ofthem before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.

Harris said I encouraged him. I didn’t encouragehim. A dog like that don’t want anyencouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that isborn in him that makes him do things like that.

The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the bighamper, and said he hoped nothing would be found broken.George said that if anything was broken it was broken, whichreflection seemed to comfort him. He also said he was readyfor bed. We were all ready for bed. Harris was tosleep with us that night, and we went upstairs.

We tossed for beds, and Harris had to sleep with me. Hesaid:

“Do you prefer the inside or the outside, J.?”

I said I generally preferred to sleep inside a bed.

Harris said it was old.

George said:

“What time shall I wake you fellows?”

Harris said:

“Seven.”

I said:

“No—six,” because I wanted to write someletters.

Harris and I had a bit of a row over it, but at last split thedifference, and said half-past six.

“Wake us at 6.30, George,” we said.

George made no answer, and we found, on going over, that hehad been asleep for some time; so we placed the bath where hecould tumble into it on getting out in the morning, and went tobed ourselves.

CHAPTER V.

Mrs. P. arouses us.—George, thesluggard.—The “weather forecast”swindle.—Our luggage.—Depravity of the smallboy.—The people gather round us.—We drive off ingreat style, and arrive at Waterloo.—Innocence of SouthWestern Officials concerning such worldly things astrains.—We are afloat, afloat in an open boat.

It was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning.

She said:

“Do you know that it’s nearly nine o’clock,sir?”

“Nine o’ what?” I cried, starting up.

“Nine o’clock,” she replied, through thekeyhole. “I thought you was a-oversleepingyourselves.”

I woke Harris, and told him. He said:

“I thought you wanted to get up at six?”

“So I did,” I answered; “why didn’tyou wake me?”

“How could I wake you, when you didn’t wakeme?” he retorted. “Now we shan’t get onthe water till after twelve. I wonder you take the troubleto get up at all.”

“Um,” I replied, “lucky for you that Ido. If I hadn’t woke you, you’d have lain therefor the whole fortnight.”

We snarled at one another in this strain for the next fewminutes, when we were interrupted by a defiant snore fromGeorge. It reminded us, for the first time since our beingcalled, of his existence. There he lay—the man whohad wanted to know what time he should wake us—on his back,with his mouth wide open, and his knees stuck up.

I don’t know why it should be, I am sure; but the sightof another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me. Itseems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of aman’s life—the priceless moments that will never comeback to him again—being wasted in mere brutish sleep.

There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth theinestimable gift of time; his valuable life, every second ofwhich he would have to account for hereafter, passing away fromhim, unused. He might have been up stuffing himself witheggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or flirting with the slavey,instead of sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging oblivion.

It was a terrible thought. Harris and I appeared to bestruck by it at the same instant. We determined to savehim, and, in this noble resolve, our own dispute wasforgotten. We flew across and slung the clothes off him,and Harris landed him one with a slipper, and I shouted in hisear, and he awoke.

“Wasermarrer?” he observed, sitting up.

“Get up, you fat-headed chunk!” roaredHarris. “It’s quarter to ten.”

“What!” he shrieked, jumping out of bed into thebath; “Who the thunder put this thing here?”

We told him he must have been a fool not to see the bath.

We finished dressing, and, when it came to the extras, weremembered that we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush andcomb (that tooth-brush of mine will be the death of me, I know),and we had to go downstairs, and fish them out of the bag.And when we had done that George wanted the shaving tackle.We told him that he would have to go without shaving thatmorning, as we weren’t going to unpack that bag again forhim, nor for anyone like him.

He said:

“Don’t be absurd. How can I go into the Citylike this?”

It was certainly rather rough on the City, but what cared wefor human suffering? As Harris said, in his common, vulgarway, the City would have to lump it.

We went downstairs to breakfast. Montmorency hadinvited two other dogs to come and see him off, and they werewhiling away the time by fighting on the doorstep. Wecalmed them with an umbrella, and sat down to chops and coldbeef.

Harris said:

“The great thing is to make a good breakfast,” andhe started with a couple of chops, saying that he would takethese while they were hot, as the beef could wait.

George got hold of the paper, and read us out the boatingfatalities, and the weather forecast, which latter prophesied“rain, cold, wet to fine” (whatever more than usuallyghastly thing in weather that may be), “occasional localthunder-storms, east wind, with general depression over theMidland Counties (London and Channel). Bar.falling.”

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishnessby which we are plagued, this “weather-forecast”fraud is about the most aggravating. It“forecasts” precisely what happened yesterday orthe day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going tohappen to-day.

I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one lateautumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the localnewspaper. “Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may beexpected to-day,” it would say on Monday, and so we wouldgive up our picnic, and stop indoors all day, waiting for therain.—And people would pass the house, going off inwagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sunshining out, and not a cloud to be seen.

“Ah!” we said, as we stood looking out at themthrough the window, “won’t they come homesoaked!”

And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, andcame back and stirred the fire, and got our books, and arrangedour specimens of seaweed and co*ckle shells. By twelveo’clock, with the sun pouring into the room, the heatbecame quite oppressive, and we wondered when those heavy showersand occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.

“Ah! they’ll come in the afternoon, you’llfind,” we said to each other. “Oh,won’t those people get wet. What alark!”

At one o’clock, the landlady would come in to ask if weweren’t going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.

“No, no,” we replied, with a knowing chuckle,“not we. We don’t mean to getwet—no, no.”

And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was nosign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea thatit would come down all at once, just as the people had startedfor home, and were out of the reach of any shelter, and that theywould thus get more drenched than ever. But not a drop everfell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely night afterit.

The next morning we would read that it was going to be a“warm, fine to set-fair day; much heat;” and we woulddress ourselves in flimsy things, and go out, and, half-an-hourafter we had started, it would commence to rain hard, and abitterly cold wind would spring up, and both would keep onsteadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds andrheumatism all over us, and go to bed.

The weather is a thing that is beyond me altogether. Inever can understand it. The barometer is useless: it is asmisleading as the newspaper forecast.

There was one hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I wasstaying last spring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to“set fair.” It was simply pouring with rainoutside, and had been all day; and I couldn’t quite makematters out. I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up andpointed to “very dry.” The Boots stopped as hewas passing, and said he expected it meant to-morrow. Ifancied that maybe it was thinking of the week before last, butBoots said, No, he thought not.

I tapped it again the next morning, and it went up stillhigher, and the rain came down faster than ever. OnWednesday I went and hit it again, and the pointer went roundtowards “set fair,” “very dry,” and“much heat,” until it was stopped by the peg, andcouldn’t go any further. It tried its best, but theinstrument was built so that it couldn’t prophesy fineweather any harder than it did without breaking itself. Itevidently wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and waterfamine, and sunstroke, and simooms, and such things, but the pegprevented it, and it had to be content with pointing to the merecommonplace “very dry.”

Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady torrent, and thelower part of the town was under water, owing to the river havingoverflowed.

Boots said it was evident that we were going to have aprolonged spell of grand weather some time, and read out apoem which was printed over the top of the oracle, about

“Long foretold, long last;
Short notice, soon past.”

The fine weather never came that summer. I expect thatmachine must have been referring to the following spring.

Then there are those new style of barometers, the longstraight ones. I never can make head or tail ofthose. There is one side for 10 a.m. yesterday, and oneside for 10 a.m. to-day; but you can’t always get there asearly as ten, you know. It rises or falls for rain andfine, with much or less wind, and one end is “Nly”and the other “Ely” (what’s Ely got to do withit?), and if you tap it, it doesn’t tell youanything. And you’ve got to correct it to sea-level,and reduce it to Fahrenheit, and even then I don’t know theanswer.

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is badenough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowingabout it beforehand. The prophet we like is the old manwho, on the particularly gloomy-looking morning of some day whenwe particularly want it to be fine, looks round the horizon witha particularly knowing eye, and says:

“Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right.It will break all right enough, sir.”

“Ah, he knows”, we say, as we wish himgood-morning, and start off; “wonderful how these oldfellows can tell!”

And we feel an affection for that man which is not at alllessened by the circ*mstances of its not clearing up, butcontinuing to rain steadily all day.

“Ah, well,” we feel, “he did hisbest.”

For the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary,we entertain only bitter and revengeful thoughts.

“Going to clear up, d’ye think?” we shout,cheerily, as we pass.

“Well, no, sir; I’m afraid it’s settled downfor the day,” he replies, shaking his head.

“Stupid old fool!” we mutter, “what’she know about it?” And, if his portent provescorrect, we come back feeling still more angry against him, andwith a vague notion that, somehow or other, he has had somethingto do with it.

It was too bright and sunny on this especial morning forGeorge’s blood-curdling readings about “Bar.falling,” “atmospheric disturbance, passing in anoblique line over Southern Europe,” and “pressureincreasing,” to very much upset us: and so, finding that hecould not make us wretched, and was only wasting his time, hesneaked the cigarette that I had carefully rolled up for myself,and went.

Then Harris and I, having finished up the few things left onthe table, carted out our luggage on to the doorstep, and waitedfor a cab.

There seemed a good deal of luggage, when we put it alltogether. There was the Gladstone and the small hand-bag,and the two hampers, and a large roll of rugs, and some four orfive overcoats and macintoshes, and a few umbrellas, and thenthere was a melon by itself in a bag, because it was too bulky togo in anywhere, and a couple of pounds of grapes in another bag,and a Japanese paper umbrella, and a frying pan, which, being toolong to pack, we had wrapped round with brown paper.

It did look a lot, and Harris and I began to feel ratherashamed of it, though why we should be, I can’t see.No cab came by, but the street boys did, and got interested inthe show, apparently, and stopped.

Biggs’s boy was the first to come round. Biggs isour greengrocer, and his chief talent lies in securing theservices of the most abandoned and unprincipled errand-boys thatcivilisation has as yet produced. If anything more thanusually villainous in the boy-line crops up in our neighbourhood,we know that it is Biggs’s latest. I was told that,at the time of the Great Coram Street murder, it was promptlyconcluded by our street that Biggs’s boy (for that period)was at the bottom of it, and had he not been able, in reply tothe severe cross-examination to which he was subjected by No. 19,when he called there for orders the morning after the crime(assisted by No. 21, who happened to be on the step at the time),to prove a complete alibi, it would have gone hard withhim. I didn’t know Biggs’s boy at that time,but, from what I have seen of them since, I should not haveattached much importance to that alibi myself.

Biggs’s boy, as I have said, came round thecorner. He was evidently in a great hurry when he firstdawned upon the vision, but, on catching sight of Harris and me,and Montmorency, and the things, he eased up and stared.Harris and I frowned at him. This might have wounded a moresensitive nature, but Biggs’s boys are not, as a rule,touchy. He came to a dead stop, a yard from our step, and,leaning up against the railings, and selecting a straw to chew,fixed us with his eye. He evidently meant to see this thingout.

In another moment, the grocer’s boy passed on theopposite side of the street. Biggs’s boy hailedhim:

“Hi! ground floor o’ 42’sa-moving.”

The grocer’s boy came across, and took up a position onthe other side of the step. Then the young gentleman fromthe boot-shop stopped, and joined Biggs’s boy; while theempty-can superintendent from “The Blue Posts” tookup an independent position on the curb.

“They ain’t a-going to starve, are they?”said the gentleman from the boot-shop.

“Ah! you’d want to take a thing or two withyou,” retorted “The Blue Posts,”“if you was a-going to cross the Atlantic in a smallboat.”

“They ain’t a-going to cross the Atlantic,”struck in Biggs’s boy; “they’re a-going to findStanley.”

By this time, quite a small crowd had collected, and peoplewere asking each other what was the matter. One party (theyoung and giddy portion of the crowd) held that it was a wedding,and pointed out Harris as the bridegroom; while the elder andmore thoughtful among the populace inclined to the idea that itwas a funeral, and that I was probably the corpse’sbrother.

At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as arule, and when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass at the rateof three a minute, and hang about, and get in your way), andpacking ourselves and our belongings into it, and shooting out acouple of Montmorency’s friends, who had evidently swornnever to forsake him, we drove away amidst the cheers of thecrowd, Biggs’s boy shying a carrot after us for luck.

We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-fivestarted from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterlooever does know where a train is going to start from, or where atrain when it does start is going to, or anything about it.The porter who took our things thought it would go from numbertwo platform, while another porter, with whom he discussed thequestion, had heard a rumour that it would go from numberone. The station-master, on the other hand, was convincedit would start from the local.

To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked thetraffic superintendent, and he told us that he had just met aman, who said he had seen it at number three platform. Wewent to number three platform, but the authorities there saidthat they rather thought that train was the Southampton express,or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure itwasn’t the Kingston train, though why they were sure itwasn’t they couldn’t say.

Then our porter said he thought that must be it on thehigh-level platform; said he thought he knew the train. Sowe went to the high-level platform, and saw the engine-driver,and asked him if he was going to Kingston. He said hecouldn’t say for certain of course, but that he ratherthought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn’t the 11.5 forKingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 forVirginia Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, orsomewhere in that direction, and we should all know when we gotthere. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and beggedhim to be the 11.5 for Kingston.

“Nobody will ever know, on this line,” we said,“what you are, or where you’re going. You knowthe way, you slip off quietly and go to Kingston.”

“Well, I don’t know, gents,” replied thenoble fellow, “but I suppose some train’s gotto go to Kingston; and I’ll do it. Gimme thehalf-crown.”

Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-WesternRailway.

We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by wasreally the Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours atWaterloo, looking for it, and nobody knew what had become ofit.

Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge, andto it we wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, andinto it we stepped.

“Are you all right, sir?” said the man.

“Right it is,” we answered; and with Harris at thesculls and I at the tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy anddeeply suspicious, in the prow, out we shot on to the waterswhich, for a fortnight, were to be our home.

CHAPTER VI.

Kingston.—Instructive remarks on earlyEnglish history.—Instructive observations on carved oak andlife in general.—Sad case of Stivvings,junior.—Musings on antiquity.—I forget that I amsteering.—Interesting result.—Hampton CourtMaze.—Harris as a guide.

It was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as youcare to take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf isblushing to a deeper green; and the year seems like a fair youngmaid, trembling with strange, wakening pulses on the brink ofwomanhood.

The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down tothe water’s edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashingsunlight, the glinting river with its drifting barges, the woodedtowpath, the trim-kept villas on the other side, Harris, in a redand orange blazer, grunting away at the sculls, the distantglimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors, all made a sunnypicture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet sopeaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myselfbeing dreamily lulled off into a musing fit.

I mused on Kingston, or “Kyningestun,” as it wasonce called in the days when Saxon “kinges” werecrowned there. Great Cæsar crossed the river there,and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands.Cæsar, like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to havestopped everywhere: only he was more respectable than good QueenBess; he didn’t put up at the public-houses.

She was nuts on public-houses, was England’s VirginQueen. There’s scarcely a pub. of any attractionswithin ten miles of London that she does not seem to have lookedin at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time or other. Iwonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf, andbecame a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, anddied, if they would put up signs over the public-houses that hehad patronised: “Harris had a glass of bitter in thishouse;” “Harris had two of Scotch cold here in thesummer of ’88;” “Harris was chucked from herein December, 1886.”

No, there would be too many of them! It would be thehouses that he had never entered that would become famous.“Only house in South London that Harris never had a drinkin!” The people would flock to it to see what couldhave been the matter with it.

How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hatedKyningestun! The coronation feast had been too much forhim. Maybe boar’s head stuffed with sugar-plums didnot agree with him (it wouldn’t with me, I know), and hehad had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisyrevel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his belovedElgiva.

Perhaps, from the casem*nt, standing hand-in-hand, they werewatching the calm moonlight on the river, while from the distanthalls the boisterous revelry floated in broken bursts offaint-heard din and tumult.

Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into thequiet room, and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, anddrag poor Edwy back to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.

Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings andSaxon revelry were buried side by side, and Kingston’sgreatness passed away for a time, to rise once more when HamptonCourt became the palace of the Tudors and the Stuarts, and theroyal barges strained at their moorings on the river’sbank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down the water-stepsto cry: “What Ferry, ho! Gadzooks,gramercy.”

Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly ofthose days when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles andcourtiers lived there, near their King, and the long road to thepalace gates was gay all day with clanking steel and prancingpalfreys, and rustling silks and velvets, and fair faces.The large and spacious houses, with their oriel, latticedwindows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs, breatheof the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers,and complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days“when men knew how to build.” The hard redbricks have only grown more firmly set with time, and their oakstairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down themquietly.

Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is amagnificent carved oak staircase in one of the houses inKingston. It is a shop now, in the market-place, but it wasevidently once the mansion of some great personage. Afriend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there to buy a hatone day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his pocketand paid for it then and there.

The shopman (he knows my friend) was naturally a littlestaggered at first; but, quickly recovering himself, and feelingthat something ought to be done to encourage this sort of thing,asked our hero if he would like to see some fine old carvedoak. My friend said he would, and the shopman, thereupon,took him through the shop, and up the staircase of thehouse. The balusters were a superb piece of workmanship,and the wall all the way up was oak-panelled, with carving thatwould have done credit to a palace.

From the stairs, they went into the drawing-room, which was alarge, bright room, decorated with a somewhat startling thoughcheerful paper of a blue ground. There was nothing,however, remarkable about the apartment, and my friend wonderedwhy he had been brought there. The proprietor went up tothe paper, and tapped it. It gave forth a wooden sound.

“Oak,” he explained. “All carved oak,right up to the ceiling, just the same as you saw on thestaircase.”

“But, great Cæsar! man,” expostulated myfriend; “you don’t mean to say you have covered overcarved oak with blue wall-paper?”

“Yes,” was the reply: “it was expensivework. Had to match-board it all over first, ofcourse. But the room looks cheerful now. It was awfulgloomy before.”

I can’t say I altogether blame the man (which isdoubtless a great relief to his mind). From his point ofview, which would be that of the average householder, desiring totake life as lightly as possible, and not that of theold-curiosity-shop maniac, there is reason on his side.Carved oak is very pleasant to look at, and to have a little of,but it is no doubt somewhat depressing to live in, for thosewhose fancy does not lie that way. It would be like livingin a church.

No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn’tcare for carved oak, should have his drawing-room panelled withit, while people who do care for it have to pay enormous pricesto get it. It seems to be the rule of this world.Each person has what he doesn’t want, and other people havewhat he does want.

Married men have wives, and don’t seem to want them; andyoung single fellows cry out that they can’t getthem. Poor people who can hardly keep themselves have eighthearty children. Rich old couples, with no one to leavetheir money to, die childless.

Then there are girls with lovers. The girls that havelovers never want them. They say they would rather bewithout them, that they bother them, and why don’t they goand make love to Miss Smith and Miss Brown, who are plain andelderly, and haven’t got any lovers? They themselvesdon’t want lovers. They never mean to marry.

It does not do to dwell on these things; it makes one sosad.

There was a boy at our school, we used to call him Sandfordand Merton. His real name was Stivvings. He was themost extraordinary lad I ever came across. I believe hereally liked study. He used to get into awful rows forsitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French irregularverbs there was simply no keeping him away from them. Hewas full of weird and unnatural notions about being a credit tohis parents and an honour to the school; and he yearned to winprizes, and grow up and be a clever man, and had all those sortsof weak-minded ideas. I never knew such a strange creature,yet harmless, mind you, as the babe unborn.

Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that hecouldn’t go to school. There never was such a boy toget ill as that Sandford and Merton. If there was any knowndisease going within ten miles of him, he had it, and had itbadly. He would take bronchitis in the dog-days, and havehay-fever at Christmas. After a six weeks’ period ofdrought, he would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and hewould go out in a November fog and come home with asunstroke.

They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drewall his teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered soterribly with toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia andear-ache. He was never without a cold, except once for nineweeks while he had scarlet fever; and he always hadchilblains. During the great cholera scare of 1871, ourneighbourhood was singularly free from it. There was onlyone reputed case in the whole parish: that case was youngStivvings.

He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken andcustards and hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob,because they wouldn’t let him do Latin exercises, and tookhis German grammar away from him.

And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of ourschool-life for the sake of being ill for a day, and had nodesire whatever to give our parents any excuse for being stuck-upabout us, couldn’t catch so much as a stiff neck. Wefooled about in draughts, and it did us good, and freshened usup; and we took things to make us sick, and they made us fat, andgave us an appetite. Nothing we could think of seemed tomake us ill until the holidays began. Then, on thebreaking-up day, we caught colds, and whooping cough, and allkinds of disorders, which lasted till the term recommenced; when,in spite of everything we could manœuvre to the contrary,we would get suddenly well again, and be better than ever.

Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, andput into the oven and baked.

To go back to the carved-oak question, they must have had veryfair notions of the artistic and the beautiful, ourgreat-great-grandfathers. Why, all our art treasures ofto-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundredyears ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty inthe old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prizeso now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them thatgives them their charms in our eyes. The “oldblue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were thecommon every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; andthe pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we handround now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend theyunderstand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother ofthe eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when hecried.

Will it be the same in the future? Will the prizedtreasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the daybefore? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates beranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 andodd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and thebeautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our SarahJanes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, becarefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only bythe lady of the house?

That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnishedlodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Itsnose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfullyerect, its expression is amiability carried to verge ofimbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered asa work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtlessfriends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has noadmiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circ*mstancethat her aunt gave it to her.

But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable thatthat dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs,and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and putin a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, andadmire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth ofthe colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bitof the tail that is lost no doubt was.

We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. Weare too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and thestars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they arecommon to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs willhave become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how wedid it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred tolovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in thenineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.”

The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did atschool will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorianera,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-whitemugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, allcracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and richpeople will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japanwill buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and“Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escapeddestruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient Englishcurios.

At this point Harris threw away the sculls, got up and lefthis seat, and sat on his back, and stuck his legs in theair. Montmorency howled, and turned a somersault, and thetop hamper jumped up, and all the things came out.

I was somewhat surprised, but I did not lose my temper.I said, pleasantly enough:

“Hulloa! what’s that for?”

“What’s that for? Why—”

No, on second thoughts, I will not repeat what Harrissaid. I may have been to blame, I admit it; but nothingexcuses violence of language and coarseness of expression,especially in a man who has been carefully brought up, as I knowHarris has been. I was thinking of other things, andforgot, as any one might easily understand, that I was steering,and the consequence was that we had got mixed up a good deal withthe tow-path. It was difficult to say, for the moment,which was us and which was the Middlesex bank of the river; butwe found out after a while, and separated ourselves.

Harris, however, said he had done enough for a bit, andproposed that I should take a turn; so, as we were in, I got outand took the tow-line, and ran the boat on past HamptonCourt. What a dear old wall that is that runs along by theriver there! I never pass it without feeling better for thesight of it. Such a mellow, bright, sweet old wall; what acharming picture it would make, with the lichen creeping here,and the moss growing there, a shy young vine peeping over the topat this spot, to see what is going on upon the busy river, andthe sober old ivy clustering a little farther down! Thereare fifty shades and tints and hues in every ten yards of thatold wall. If I could only draw, and knew how to paint, Icould make a lovely sketch of that old wall, I’msure. I’ve often thought I should like to live atHampton Court. It looks so peaceful and so quiet, and it issuch a dear old place to ramble round in the early morning beforemany people are about.

But, there, I don’t suppose I should really care for itwhen it came to actual practice. It would be so ghastlydull and depressing in the evening, when your lamp cast uncannyshadows on the panelled walls, and the echo of distant feet rangthrough the cold stone corridors, and now drew nearer, and nowdied away, and all was death-like silence, save the beating ofone’s own heart.

We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We lovelight and life. That is why we crowd into the towns andcities, and the country grows more and more deserted everyyear. In the sunlight—in the daytime, when Nature isalive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides and thedeep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earthhas gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems solonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silenthouse. Then we sit and sob, and long for the gas-litstreets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering throbof human life. We feel so helpless and so little in thegreat stillness, when the dark trees rustle in thenight-wind. There are so many ghosts about, and theirsilent sighs make us feel so sad. Let us gather together inthe great cities, and light huge bonfires of a million gas-jets,and shout and sing together, and feel brave.

Harris asked me if I’d ever been in the maze at HamptonCourt. He said he went in once to show somebody else theway. He had studied it up in a map, and it was so simplethat it seemed foolish—hardly worth the twopence chargedfor admission. Harris said he thought that map must havebeen got up as a practical joke, because it wasn’t a bitlike the real thing, and only misleading. It was a countrycousin that Harris took in. He said:

“We’ll just go in here, so that you can sayyou’ve been, but it’s very simple. It’sabsurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the firstturning to the right. We’ll just walk round for tenminutes, and then go and get some lunch.”

They met some people soon after they had got inside, who saidthey had been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had hadabout enough of it. Harris told them they could follow him,if they liked; he was just going in, and then should turn roundand come out again. They said it was very kind of him, andfell behind, and followed.

They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over,as they went along, until they had absorbed all the persons inthe maze. People who had given up all hopes of ever gettingeither in or out, or of ever seeing their home and friends again,plucked up courage at the sight of Harris and his party, andjoined the procession, blessing him. Harris said he shouldjudge there must have been twenty people, following him, in all;and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning,insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him.

Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way,and his cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze.

“Oh, one of the largest in Europe,” saidHarris.

“Yes, it must be,” replied the cousin,“because we’ve walked a good two milesalready.”

Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he heldon until, at last, they passed the half of a penny bun on theground that Harris’s cousin swore he had noticed thereseven minutes ago. Harris said: “Oh,impossible!” but the woman with the baby said, “Notat all,” as she herself had taken it from the child, andthrown it down there, just before she met Harris. She alsoadded that she wished she never had met Harris, and expressed anopinion that he was an impostor. That made Harris mad, andhe produced his map, and explained his theory.

“The map may be all right enough,” said one of theparty, “if you know whereabouts in it we arenow.”

Harris didn’t know, and suggested that the best thing todo would be to go back to the entrance, and begin again.For the beginning again part of it there was not much enthusiasm;but with regard to the advisability of going back to the entrancethere was complete unanimity, and so they turned, and trailedafter Harris again, in the opposite direction. About tenminutes more passed, and then they found themselves in thecentre.

Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what hehad been aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and hedecided to treat it as an accident.

Anyhow, they had got something to start from then. Theydid know where they were, and the map was once more consulted,and the thing seemed simpler than ever, and off they started forthe third time.

And three minutes later they were back in the centreagain.

After that, they simply couldn’t get anywhereelse. Whatever way they turned brought them back to themiddle. It became so regular at length, that some of thepeople stopped there, and waited for the others to take a walkround, and come back to them. Harris drew out his mapagain, after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated themob, and they told him to go and curl his hair with it.Harris said that he couldn’t help feeling that, to acertain extent, he had become unpopular.

They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, andthe man came and climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted outdirections to them. But all their heads were, by this time,in such a confused whirl that they were incapable of graspinganything, and so the man told them to stop where they were, andhe would come to them. They huddled together, and waited;and he climbed down, and came in.

He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to thebusiness; and when he got in, he couldn’t find them, and hewandered about, trying to get to them, and then he gotlost. They caught sight of him, every now and then, rushingabout the other side of the hedge, and he would see them, andrush to get to them, and they would wait there for about fiveminutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the samespot, and ask them where they had been.

They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back fromhis dinner before they got out.

Harris said he thought it was a very fine maze, so far as hewas a judge; and we agreed that we would try to get George to gointo it, on our way back.

CHAPTER VII.

The river in its Sunday garb.—Dress onthe river.—A chance for the men.—Absence of taste inHarris.—George’s blazer.—A day with thefashion-plate young lady.—Mrs. Thomas’stomb.—The man who loves not graves and coffins andskulls.—Harris mad.—His views on George and Banks andlemonade.—He performs tricks.

It was while passing through Moulsey Lock that Harris told meabout his maze experience. It took us some time to passthrough, as we were the only boat, and it is a big lock. Idon’t think I ever remember to have seen Moulsey Lock,before, with only one boat in it. It is, I suppose,Boulter’s not even excepted, the busiest lock on theriver.

I have stood and watched it, sometimes, when you could not seeany water at all, but only a brilliant tangle of bright blazers,and gay caps, and saucy hats, and many-coloured parasols, andsilken rugs, and cloaks, and streaming ribbons, and daintywhites; when looking down into the lock from the quay, you mightfancy it was a huge box into which flowers of every hue and shadehad been thrown pell-mell, and lay piled up in a rainbow heap,that covered every corner.

On a fine Sunday it presents this appearance nearly all daylong, while, up the stream, and down the stream, lie, waitingtheir turn, outside the gates, long lines of still more boats;and boats are drawing near and passing away, so that the sunnyriver, from the Palace up to Hampton Church, is dotted and deckedwith yellow, and blue, and orange, and white, and red, andpink. All the inhabitants of Hampton and Moulsey dressthemselves up in boating costume, and come and mouch round thelock with their dogs, and flirt, and smoke, and watch the boats;and, altogether, what with the caps and jackets of the men, thepretty coloured dresses of the women, the excited dogs, themoving boats, the white sails, the pleasant landscape, and thesparkling water, it is one of the gayest sights I know of nearthis dull old London town.

The river affords a good opportunity for dress. For oncein a way, we men are able to show our taste in colours,and I think we come out very natty, if you ask me. I alwayslike a little red in my things—red and black. Youknow my hair is a sort of golden brown, rather a pretty shadeI’ve been told, and a dark red matches it beautifully; andthen I always think a light-blue necktie goes so well with it,and a pair of those Russian-leather shoes and a red silkhandkerchief round the waist—a handkerchief looks so muchbetter than a belt.

Harris always keeps to shades or mixtures of orange or yellow,but I don’t think he is at all wise in this. Hiscomplexion is too dark for yellows. Yellows don’tsuit him: there can be no question about it. I want him totake to blue as a background, with white or cream for relief;but, there! the less taste a person has in dress, the moreobstinate he always seems to be. It is a great pity,because he will never be a success as it is, while there are oneor two colours in which he might not really look so bad, with hishat on.

George has bought some new things for this trip, and I’mrather vexed about them. The blazer is loud. I shouldnot like George to know that I thought so, but there really is noother word for it. He brought it home and showed it to uson Thursday evening. We asked him what colour he called it,and he said he didn’t know. He didn’t thinkthere was a name for the colour. The man had told him itwas an Oriental design. George put it on, and asked us whatwe thought of it. Harris said that, as an object to hangover a flower-bed in early spring to frighten the birds away, heshould respect it; but that, considered as an article of dressfor any human being, except a Margate nigg*r, it made himill. George got quite huffy; but, as Harris said, if hedidn’t want his opinion, why did he ask for it?

What troubles Harris and myself, with regard to it, is that weare afraid it will attract attention to the boat.

Girls, also, don’t look half bad in a boat, if prettilydressed. Nothing is more fetching, to my thinking, than atasteful boating costume. But a “boatingcostume,” it would be as well if all ladies wouldunderstand, ought to be a costume that can be worn in a boat, andnot merely under a glass-case. It utterly spoils anexcursion if you have folk in the boat who are thinking all thetime a good deal more of their dress than of the trip. Itwas my misfortune once to go for a water picnic with two ladiesof this kind. We did have a lively time!

They were both beautifully got up—all lace and silkystuff, and flowers, and ribbons, and dainty shoes, and lightgloves. But they were dressed for a photographic studio,not for a river picnic. They were the “boatingcostumes” of a French fashion-plate. It wasridiculous, fooling about in them anywhere near real earth, air,and water.

The first thing was that they thought the boat was notclean. We dusted all the seats for them, and then assuredthem that it was, but they didn’t believe us. One ofthem rubbed the cushion with the forefinger of her glove, andshowed the result to the other, and they both sighed, and satdown, with the air of early Christian martyrs trying to makethemselves comfortable up against the stake. You are liableto occasionally splash a little when sculling, and it appearedthat a drop of water ruined those costumes. The mark nevercame out, and a stain was left on the dress for ever.

I was stroke. I did my best. I feathered some twofeet high, and I paused at the end of each stroke to let theblades drip before returning them, and I picked out a smooth bitof water to drop them into again each time. (Bow said,after a while, that he did not feel himself a sufficientlyaccomplished oarsman to pull with me, but that he would sitstill, if I would allow him, and study my stroke. He saidit interested him.) But, notwithstanding all this, and tryas I would, I could not help an occasional flicker of water fromgoing over those dresses.

The girls did not complain, but they huddled up closetogether, and set their lips firm, and every time a drop touchedthem, they visibly shrank and shuddered. It was a noblesight to see them suffering thus in silence, but it unnerved mealtogether. I am too sensitive. I got wild and fitfulin my rowing, and splashed more and more, the harder I tried notto.

I gave it up at last; I said I’d row bow. Bowthought the arrangement would be better too, and we changedplaces. The ladies gave an involuntary sigh of relief whenthey saw me go, and quite brightened up for a moment. Poorgirls! they had better have put up with me. The man theyhad got now was a jolly, light-hearted, thick-headed sort of achap, with about as much sensitiveness in him as there might bein a Newfoundland puppy. You might look daggers at him foran hour and he would not notice it, and it would not trouble himif he did. He set a good, rollicking, dashing stroke thatsent the spray playing all over the boat like a fountain, andmade the whole crowd sit up straight in no time. When hespread more than pint of water over one of those dresses, hewould give a pleasant little laugh, and say:

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure;” and offerthem his handkerchief to wipe it off with.

“Oh, it’s of no consequence,” the poor girlswould murmur in reply, and covertly draw rugs and coats overthemselves, and try and protect themselves with their laceparasols.

At lunch they had a very bad time of it. People wantedthem to sit on the grass, and the grass was dusty; and thetree-trunks, against which they were invited to lean, did notappear to have been brushed for weeks; so they spread theirhandkerchiefs on the ground and sat on those, bolt upright.Somebody, in walking about with a plate of beef-steak pie,tripped up over a root, and sent the pie flying. None of itwent over them, fortunately, but the accident suggested a freshdanger to them, and agitated them; and, whenever anybody movedabout, after that, with anything in his hand that could fall andmake a mess, they watched that person with growing anxiety untilhe sat down again.

“Now then, you girls,” said our friend Bow tothem, cheerily, after it was all over, “come along,you’ve got to wash up!”

They didn’t understand him at first. When theygrasped the idea, they said they feared they did not know how towash up.

“Oh, I’ll soon show you,” he cried;“it’s rare fun! You lie down on your—Imean you lean over the bank, you know, and sloush the thingsabout in the water.”

The elder sister said that she was afraid that theyhadn’t got on dresses suited to the work.

“Oh, they’ll be all right,” said helight-heartedly; “tuck ’em up.”

And he made them do it, too. He told them that that sortof thing was half the fun of a picnic. They said it wasvery interesting.

Now I come to think it over, was that young man asdense-headed as we thought? or was he—no, impossible! therewas such a simple, child-like expression about him!

Harris wanted to get out at Hampton Church, to go and see Mrs.Thomas’s tomb.

“Who is Mrs. Thomas?” I asked.

“How should I know?” replied Harris.“She’s a lady that’s got a funny tomb, and Iwant to see it.”

I objected. I don’t know whether it is that I ambuilt wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstonesmyself. I know that the proper thing to do, when you get toa village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoythe graves; but it is a recreation that I always denymyself. I take no interest in creeping round dim and chillychurches behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs. Noteven the sight of a bit of cracked brass let into a stone affordsme what I call real happiness.

I shock respectable sextons by the imperturbability I am ableto assume before exciting inscriptions, and by my lack ofenthusiasm for the local family history, while my ill-concealedanxiety to get outside wounds their feelings.

One golden morning of a sunny day, I leant against the lowstone wall that guarded a little village church, and I smoked,and drank in deep, calm gladness from the sweet, restfulscene—the grey old church with its clustering ivy and itsquaint carved wooden porch, the white lane winding down the hillbetween tall rows of elms, the thatched-roof cottages peepingabove their trim-kept hedges, the silver river in the hollow, thewooded hills beyond!

It was a lovely landscape. It was idyllic, poetical, andit inspired me. I felt good and noble. I felt Ididn’t want to be sinful and wicked any more. I wouldcome and live here, and never do any more wrong, and lead ablameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair when I got old,and all that sort of thing.

In that moment I forgave all my friends and relations fortheir wickedness and cussedness, and I blessed them. Theydid not know that I blessed them. They went their abandonedway all unconscious of what I, far away in that peaceful village,was doing for them; but I did it, and I wished that I could letthem know that I had done it, because I wanted to make themhappy. I was going on thinking away all these grand, tenderthoughts, when my reverie was broken in upon by a shrill pipingvoice crying out:

“All right, sur, I’m a-coming, I’ma-coming. It’s all right, sur; don’t you be ina hurry.”

I looked up, and saw an old bald-headed man hobbling acrossthe churchyard towards me, carrying a huge bunch of keys in hishand that shook and jingled at every step.

I motioned him away with silent dignity, but he stilladvanced, screeching out the while:

“I’m a-coming, sur, I’m a-coming.I’m a little lame. I ain’t as spry as I used tobe. This way, sur.”

“Go away, you miserable old man,” I said.

“I’ve come as soon as I could, sur,” hereplied. “My missis never see you till just thisminute. You follow me, sur.”

“Go away,” I repeated; “leave me before Iget over the wall, and slay you.”

He seemed surprised.

“Don’t you want to see the tombs?” hesaid.

“No,” I answered, “I don’t. Iwant to stop here, leaning up against this gritty old wall.Go away, and don’t disturb me. I am chock full ofbeautiful and noble thoughts, and I want to stop like it, becauseit feels nice and good. Don’t you come fooling about,making me mad, chivying away all my better feelings with thissilly tombstone nonsense of yours. Go away, and getsomebody to bury you cheap, and I’ll pay half theexpense.”

He was bewildered for a moment. He rubbed his eyes, andlooked hard at me. I seemed human enough on the outside: hecouldn’t make it out.

He said:

“Yuise a stranger in these parts? You don’tlive here?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t.You wouldn’t if I did.”

“Well then,” he said, “you want to see thetombs—graves—folks been buried, youknow—coffins!”

“You are an untruther,” I replied, getting roused;“I do not want to see tombs—not your tombs. Whyshould I? We have graves of our own, our family has.Why my uncle Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, that isthe pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather’svault at Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while mygreat-aunt Susan has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with aheadstone with a coffee-pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it,and a six-inch best white stone coping all the way round, thatcost pounds. When I want graves, it is to those places thatI go and revel. I do not want other folk’s.When you yourself are buried, I will come and see yours.That is all I can do for you.”

He burst into tears. He said that one of the tombs had abit of stone upon the top of it that had been said by some to beprobably part of the remains of the figure of a man, and thatanother had some words, carved upon it, that nobody had ever beenable to decipher.

I still remained obdurate, and, in broken-hearted tones, hesaid:

“Well, won’t you come and see the memorialwindow?”

I would not even see that, so he fired his last shot. Hedrew near, and whispered hoarsely:

“I’ve got a couple of skulls down in thecrypt,” he said; “come and see those. Oh, docome and see the skulls! You are a young man out for aholiday, and you want to enjoy yourself. Come and see theskulls!”

Then I turned and fled, and as I sped I heard him calling tome:

“Oh, come and see the skulls; come back and see theskulls!”

Harris, however, revels in tombs, and graves, and epitaphs,and monumental inscriptions, and the thought of not seeing Mrs.Thomas’s grave made him crazy. He said he had lookedforward to seeing Mrs. Thomas’s grave from the first momentthat the trip was proposed—said he wouldn’t havejoined if it hadn’t been for the idea of seeing Mrs.Thomas’s tomb.

I reminded him of George, and how we had to get the boat up toShepperton by five o’clock to meet him, and then he wentfor George. Why was George to fool about all day, and leaveus to lug this lumbering old top-heavy barge up and down theriver by ourselves to meet him? Why couldn’t Georgecome and do some work? Why couldn’t he have got theday off, and come down with us? Bank be blowed! Whatgood was he at the bank?

“I never see him doing any work there,” continuedHarris, “whenever I go in. He sits behind a bit ofglass all day, trying to look as if he was doing something.What’s the good of a man behind a bit of glass? Ihave to work for my living. Why can’t he work?What use is he there, and what’s the good of theirbanks? They take your money, and then, when you draw acheque, they send it back smeared all over with ‘Noeffects,’ ‘Refer to drawer.’ What’sthe good of that? That’s the sort of trick theyserved me twice last week. I’m not going to stand itmuch longer. I shall withdraw my account. If he washere, we could go and see that tomb. I don’t believehe’s at the bank at all. He’s larking aboutsomewhere, that’s what he’s doing, leaving us to doall the work. I’m going to get out, and have adrink.”

I pointed out to him that we were miles away from a pub.; andthen he went on about the river, and what was the good of theriver, and was everyone who came on the river to die ofthirst?

It is always best to let Harris have his head when he getslike this. Then he pumps himself out, and is quietafterwards.

I reminded him that there was concentrated lemonade in thehamper, and a gallon-jar of water in the nose of the boat, andthat the two only wanted mixing to make a cool and refreshingbeverage.

Then he flew off about lemonade, and “such-likeSunday-school slops,” as he termed them, ginger-beer,raspberry syrup, &c., &c. He said they all produceddyspepsia, and ruined body and soul alike, and were the cause ofhalf the crime in England.

He said he must drink something, however, and climbed upon theseat, and leant over to get the bottle. It was right at thebottom of the hamper, and seemed difficult to find, and he had tolean over further and further, and, in trying to steer at thesame time, from a topsy-turvy point of view, he pulled the wrongline, and sent the boat into the bank, and the shock upset him,and he dived down right into the hamper, and stood there on hishead, holding on to the sides of the boat like grim death, hislegs sticking up into the air. He dared not move for fearof going over, and had to stay there till I could get hold of hislegs, and haul him back, and that made him madder than ever.

CHAPTER VIII.

Blackmailing.—The proper course topursue.—Selfish boorishness of river-sidelandowner.—“Notice”boards.—Unchristianlike feelings of Harris.—HowHarris sings a comic song.—A high-classparty.—Shameful conduct of two abandoned youngmen.—Some useless information.—George buys abanjo.

We stopped under the willows by Kempton Park, andlunched. It is a pretty little spot there: a pleasant grassplateau, running along by the water’s edge, and overhung bywillows. We had just commenced the third course—thebread and jam—when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a shortpipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we weretrespassing. We said we hadn’t given the mattersufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at adefinite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us onhis word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, wewould, without further hesitation, believe it.

He gave us the required assurance, and we thanked him, but hestill hung about, and seemed to be dissatisfied, so we asked himif there was anything further that we could do for him; andHarris, who is of a chummy disposition, offered him a bit ofbread and jam.

I fancy he must have belonged to some society sworn to abstainfrom bread and jam; for he declined it quite gruffly, as if hewere vexed at being tempted with it, and he added that it was hisduty to turn us off.

Harris said that if it was a duty it ought to be done, andasked the man what was his idea with regard to the best means foraccomplishing it. Harris is what you would call a well-mademan of about number one size, and looks hard and bony, and theman measured him up and down, and said he would go and consulthis master, and then come back and chuck us both into theriver.

Of course, we never saw him any more, and, of course, all hereally wanted was a shilling. There are a certain number ofriverside roughs who make quite an income, during the summer, byslouching about the banks and blackmailing weak-minded noodles inthis way. They represent themselves as sent by theproprietor. The proper course to pursue is to offer yourname and address, and leave the owner, if he really has anythingto do with the matter, to summon you, and prove what damage youhave done to his land by sitting down on a bit of it. Butthe majority of people are so intensely lazy and timid, that theyprefer to encourage the imposition by giving in to it rather thanput an end to it by the exertion of a little firmness.

Where it is really the owners that are to blame, they ought tobe shown up. The selfishness of the riparian proprietorgrows with every year. If these men had their way theywould close the river Thames altogether. They actually dothis along the minor tributary streams and in thebackwaters. They drive posts into the bed of the stream,and draw chains across from bank to bank, and nail hugenotice-boards on every tree. The sight of thosenotice-boards rouses every evil instinct in my nature. Ifeel I want to tear each one down, and hammer it over the head ofthe man who put it up, until I have killed him, and then I wouldbury him, and put the board up over the grave as a tombstone.

I mentioned these feelings of mine to Harris, and he said hehad them worse than that. He said he not only felt hewanted to kill the man who caused the board to be put up, butthat he should like to slaughter the whole of his family and allhis friends and relations, and then burn down his house.This seemed to me to be going too far, and I said so to Harris;but he answered:

“Not a bit of it. Serve ’em all jolly wellright, and I’d go and sing comic songs on theruins.”

I was vexed to hear Harris go on in this blood-thirstystrain. We never ought to allow our instincts of justice todegenerate into mere vindictiveness. It was a long whilebefore I could get Harris to take a more Christian view of thesubject, but I succeeded at last, and he promised me that hewould spare the friends and relations at all events, and wouldnot sing comic songs on the ruins.

You have never heard Harris sing a comic song, or you wouldunderstand the service I had rendered to mankind. It is oneof Harris’s fixed ideas that he can sing a comicsong; the fixed idea, on the contrary, among those ofHarris’s friends who have heard him try, is that hecan’t and never will be able to, and that he oughtnot to be allowed to try.

When Harris is at a party, and is asked to sing, he replies:“Well, I can only sing a comic song, youknow;” and he says it in a tone that implies that hissinging of that, however, is a thing that you ought tohear once, and then die.

“Oh, that is nice,” says the hostess.“Do sing one, Mr. Harris;” and Harris gets up, andmakes for the piano, with the beaming cheeriness of agenerous-minded man who is just about to give somebodysomething.

“Now, silence, please, everybody” says thehostess, turning round; “Mr. Harris is going to sing acomic song!”

“Oh, how jolly!” they murmur; and they hurry infrom the conservatory, and come up from the stairs, and go andfetch each other from all over the house, and crowd into thedrawing-room, and sit round, all smirking in anticipation.

Then Harris begins.

Well, you don’t look for much of a voice in a comicsong. You don’t expect correct phrasing orvocalization. You don’t mind if a man does find out,when in the middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes downwith a jerk. You don’t bother about time. Youdon’t mind a man being two bars in front of theaccompaniment, and easing up in the middle of a line to argue itout with the pianist, and then starting the verse afresh.But you do expect the words.

You don’t expect a man to never remember more than thefirst three lines of the first verse, and to keep on repeatingthese until it is time to begin the chorus. You don’texpect a man to break off in the middle of a line, and snigg*r,and say, it’s very funny, but he’s blest if he canthink of the rest of it, and then try and make it up for himself,and, afterwards, suddenly recollect it, when he has got to anentirely different part of the song, and break off, without aword of warning, to go back and let you have it then andthere. You don’t—well, I will just give you anidea of Harris’s comic singing, and then you can judge ofit for yourself.

Harris (standing up in front ofpiano and addressing the expectant mob): “I’mafraid it’s a very old thing, you know. I expect youall know it, you know. But it’s the only thing Iknow. It’s the Judge’s song out ofPinafore—no, I don’t meanPinafore—I mean—you know what I mean—theother thing, you know. You must all join in the chorus, youknow.”

[Murmurs of delight and anxiety to join in thechorus. Brilliant performance of prelude to theJudge’s song in “Trial by Jury”by nervous Pianist. Moment arrives for Harris tojoin in. Harris takes no notice of it.Nervous pianist commences prelude over again, and Harris,commencing singing at the same time, dashes off thefirst two lines of the First Lord’s song out of“Pinafore.” Nervous pianist tries topush on with prelude, gives it up, and tries tofollow Harris with accompaniment to Judge’s song out of“Trial by Jury,” finds that doesn’tanswer, and tries to recollect what he is doing,and where he is, feels his mind giving way, andstops short.]

Harris (with kindlyencouragement): “It’s all right.You’re doing it very well, indeed—go on.”

Nervous Pianist: “I’mafraid there’s a mistake somewhere. What are yousinging?”

Harris (promptly):“Why the Judge’s song out of Trial by Jury.Don’t you know it?”

Some Friend of Harris’s(from the back of the room): “No, you’re not,you chuckle-head, you’re singing the Admiral’s songfrom Pinafore.”

[Long argument between Harris and Harris’s friend asto what Harris is really singing. Friend finallysuggests that it doesn’t matter what Harris is singing solong as Harris gets on and sings it, and Harris,with an evident sense of injustice rankling inside him,requests pianist to begin again. Pianist,thereupon, starts prelude to the Admiral’ssong, and Harris, seizing what he considers to be afavourable opening in the music, begins.]

Harris:

“‘When I was young and called to theBar.’”

[General roar of laughter, taken by Harris as acompliment. Pianist, thinking of his wife andfamily, gives up the unequal contest and retires;his place being taken by a stronger-nerved man.

The New Pianist (cheerily):“Now then, old man, you start off, and I’llfollow. We won’t bother about any prelude.”

Harris (upon whom theexplanation of matters has slowly dawned—laughing):“By Jove! I beg your pardon. Ofcourse—I’ve been mixing up the two songs. Itwas Jenkins confused me, you know. Now then.

[Singing; his voice appearing to come from thecellar, and suggesting the first low warnings of anapproaching earthquake.

“‘When I was young I served a term
As office-boy to an attorney’s firm.’

(Aside to pianist): “It is too low, old man;we’ll have that over again, if you don’tmind.”

[Sings first two lines over again, in a highfalsetto this time. Great surprise on the part ofthe audience. Nervous old lady near the fire beginsto cry, and has to be led out.]

Harris (continuing):

“‘I swept the windows and I swept thedoor,
And I—’

No—no, I cleaned the windows of the big frontdoor. And I polished up the floor—no, dash it—Ibeg your pardon—funny thing, I can’t think of thatline. And I—and I—Oh, well, we’ll get onto the chorus, and chance it (sings):

“‘And Ididdle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-de,
Till now I am the ruler of the Queen’s navee.’

Now then, chorus—it is the last two lines repeated, youknow.

General Chorus:

“And hediddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dee’d,
Till now he is the ruler of the Queen’s navee.”

And Harris never sees what an ass he is making of himself, andhow he is annoying a lot of people who never did him anyharm. He honestly imagines that he has given them a treat,and says he will sing another comic song after supper.

Speaking of comic songs and parties, reminds me of a rathercurious incident at which I once assisted; which, as it throwsmuch light upon the inner mental working of human nature ingeneral, ought, I think, to be recorded in these pages.

We were a fashionable and highly cultured party. We hadon our best clothes, and we talked pretty, and were veryhappy—all except two young fellows, students, just returnedfrom Germany, commonplace young men, who seemed restless anduncomfortable, as if they found the proceedings slow. Thetruth was, we were too clever for them. Our brilliant butpolished conversation, and our high-class tastes, were beyondthem. They were out of place, among us. They neverought to have been there at all. Everybody agreed uponthat, later on.

We played morceaux from the old German masters.We discussed philosophy and ethics. We flirted withgraceful dignity. We were even humorous—in ahigh-class way.

Somebody recited a French poem after supper, and we said itwas beautiful; and then a lady sang a sentimental ballad inSpanish, and it made one or two of us weep—it was sopathetic.

And then those two young men got up, and asked us if we hadever heard Herr Slossenn Boschen (who had just arrived, and wasthen down in the supper-room) sing his great German comicsong.

None of us had heard it, that we could remember.

The young men said it was the funniest song that had ever beenwritten, and that, if we liked, they would get Herr SlossennBoschen, whom they knew very well, to sing it. They said itwas so funny that, when Herr Slossenn Boschen had sung it oncebefore the German Emperor, he (the German Emperor) had had to becarried off to bed.

They said nobody could sing it like Herr Slossenn Boschen; hewas so intensely serious all through it that you might fancy hewas reciting a tragedy, and that, of course, made it all thefunnier. They said he never once suggested by his tone ormanner that he was singing anything funny—that would spoilit. It was his air of seriousness, almost of pathos, thatmade it so irresistibly amusing.

We said we yearned to hear it, that we wanted a good laugh;and they went downstairs, and fetched Herr Slossenn Boschen.

He appeared to be quite pleased to sing it, for he came up atonce, and sat down to the piano without another word.

“Oh, it will amuse you. You will laugh,”whispered the two young men, as they passed through the room, andtook up an unobtrusive position behind the Professor’sback.

Herr Slossenn Boschen accompanied himself. The preludedid not suggest a comic song exactly. It was a weird,soulful air. It quite made one’s flesh creep; but wemurmured to one another that it was the German method, andprepared to enjoy it.

I don’t understand German myself. I learned it atschool, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left,and have felt much better ever since. Still, I did not wantthe people there to guess my ignorance; so I hit upon what Ithought to be rather a good idea. I kept my eye on the twoyoung students, and followed them. When they tittered, Itittered; when they roared, I roared; and I also threw in alittle snigg*r all by myself now and then, as if I had seen a bitof humour that had escaped the others. I considered thisparticularly artful on my part.

I noticed, as the song progressed, that a good many otherpeople seemed to have their eye fixed on the two young men, aswell as myself. These other people also tittered when theyoung men tittered, and roared when the young men roared; and, asthe two young men tittered and roared and exploded with laughterpretty continuously all through the song, it went exceedinglywell.

And yet that German Professor did not seem happy. Atfirst, when we began to laugh, the expression of his face was oneof intense surprise, as if laughter were the very last thing hehad expected to be greeted with. We thought this veryfunny: we said his earnest manner was half the humour. Theslightest hint on his part that he knew how funny he was wouldhave completely ruined it all. As we continued to laugh,his surprise gave way to an air of annoyance and indignation, andhe scowled fiercely round upon us all (except upon the two youngmen who, being behind him, he could not see). That sent usinto convulsions. We told each other that it would be thedeath of us, this thing. The words alone, we said, wereenough to send us into fits, but added to his mockseriousness—oh, it was too much!

In the last verse, he surpassed himself. He gloweredround upon us with a look of such concentrated ferocity that, butfor our being forewarned as to the German method of comicsinging, we should have been nervous; and he threw such a wailingnote of agony into the weird music that, if we had not known itwas a funny song, we might have wept.

He finished amid a perfect shriek of laughter. We saidit was the funniest thing we had ever heard in all ourlives. We said how strange it was that, in the face ofthings like these, there should be a popular notion that theGermans hadn’t any sense of humour. And we asked theProfessor why he didn’t translate the song into English, sothat the common people could understand it, and hear what a realcomic song was like.

Then Herr Slossenn Boschen got up, and went on awful. Heswore at us in German (which I should judge to be a singularlyeffective language for that purpose), and he danced, and shookhis fists, and called us all the English he knew. He saidhe had never been so insulted in all his life.

It appeared that the song was not a comic song at all.It was about a young girl who lived in the Hartz Mountains, andwho had given up her life to save her lover’s soul; and hedied, and met her spirit in the air; and then, in the last verse,he jilted her spirit, and went on with anotherspirit—I’m not quite sure of the details, but it wassomething very sad, I know. Herr Boschen said he had sungit once before the German Emperor, and he (the German Emperor)had sobbed like a little child. He (Herr Boschen) said itwas generally acknowledged to be one of the most tragic andpathetic songs in the German language.

It was a trying situation for us—very trying.There seemed to be no answer. We looked around for the twoyoung men who had done this thing, but they had left the house inan unostentatious manner immediately after the end of thesong.

That was the end of that party. I never saw a partybreak up so quietly, and with so little fuss. We never saidgood-night even to one another. We came downstairs one at atime, walking softly, and keeping the shady side. We askedthe servant for our hats and coats in whispers, and opened thedoor for ourselves, and slipped out, and got round the cornerquickly, avoiding each other as much as possible.

I have never taken much interest in German songs sincethen.

We reached Sunbury Lock at half-past three. The river issweetly pretty just there before you come to the gates, and thebackwater is charming; but don’t attempt to row up it.

I tried to do so once. I was sculling, and asked thefellows who were steering if they thought it could be done, andthey said, oh, yes, they thought so, if I pulled hard. Wewere just under the little foot-bridge that crosses it betweenthe two weirs, when they said this, and I bent down over thesculls, and set myself up, and pulled.

I pulled splendidly. I got well into a steady rhythmicalswing. I put my arms, and my legs, and my back intoit. I set myself a good, quick, dashing stroke, and workedin really grand style. My two friends said it was apleasure to watch me. At the end of five minutes, I thoughtwe ought to be pretty near the weir, and I looked up. Wewere under the bridge, in exactly the same spot that we were whenI began, and there were those two idiots, injuring themselves byviolent laughing. I had been grinding away like mad to keepthat boat stuck still under that bridge. I let other peoplepull up backwaters against strong streams now.

We sculled up to Walton, a rather large place for a riversidetown. As with all riverside places, only the tiniest cornerof it comes down to the water, so that from the boat you mightfancy it was a village of some half-dozen houses, all told.Windsor and Abingdon are the only towns between London and Oxfordthat you can really see anything of from the stream. Allthe others hide round corners, and merely peep at the river downone street: my thanks to them for being so considerate, andleaving the river-banks to woods and fields and water-works.

Even Reading, though it does its best to spoil and sully andmake hideous as much of the river as it can reach, isgood-natured enough to keep its ugly face a good deal out ofsight.

Cæsar, of course, had a little place at Walton—acamp, or an entrenchment, or something of that sort.Cæsar was a regular up-river man. Also QueenElizabeth, she was there, too. You can never get away fromthat woman, go where you will. Cromwell and Bradshaw (notthe guide man, but the King Charles’s head man) likewisesojourned here. They must have been quite a pleasant littleparty, altogether.

There is an iron “scold’s bridle” in WaltonChurch. They used these things in ancient days for curbingwomen’s tongues. They have given up the attemptnow. I suppose iron was getting scarce, and nothing elsewould be strong enough.

There are also tombs of note in the church, and I was afraid Ishould never get Harris past them; but he didn’t seem tothink of them, and we went on. Above the bridge the riverwinds tremendously. This makes it look picturesque; but itirritates you from a towing or sculling point of view, and causesargument between the man who is pulling and the man who issteering.

You pass Oatlands Park on the right bank here. It is afamous old place. Henry VIII. stole it from some one or theother, I forget whom now, and lived in it. There is agrotto in the park which you can see for a fee, and which issupposed to be very wonderful; but I cannot see much in itmyself. The late duch*ess of York, who lived at Oatlands,was very fond of dogs, and kept an immense number. She hada special graveyard made, in which to bury them when they died,and there they lie, about fifty of them, with a tombstone overeach, and an epitaph inscribed thereon.

Well, I dare say they deserve it quite as much as the averageChristian does.

At “Corway Stakes”—the first bend aboveWalton Bridge—was fought a battle between Cæsar andCassivelaunus. Cassivelaunus had prepared the river forCæsar, by planting it full of stakes (and had, no doubt,put up a notice-board). But Cæsar crossed in spite ofthis. You couldn’t choke Cæsar off thatriver. He is the sort of man we want round the backwatersnow.

Halliford and Shepperton are both pretty little spots wherethey touch the river; but there is nothing remarkable abouteither of them. There is a tomb in Shepperton churchyard,however, with a poem on it, and I was nervous lest Harris shouldwant to get out and fool round it. I saw him fix a longingeye on the landing-stage as we drew near it, so I managed, by anadroit movement, to jerk his cap into the water, and in theexcitement of recovering that, and his indignation at myclumsiness, he forgot all about his beloved graves.

At Weybridge, the Wey (a pretty little stream, navigable forsmall boats up to Guildford, and one which I have always beenmaking up my mind to explore, and never have), the Bourne, andthe Basingstoke Canal all enter the Thames together. Thelock is just opposite the town, and the first thing that we saw,when we came in view of it, was George’s blazer on one ofthe lock gates, closer inspection showing that George was insideit.

Montmorency set up a furious barking, I shrieked, Harrisroared; George waved his hat, and yelled back. Thelock-keeper rushed out with a drag, under the impression thatsomebody had fallen into the lock, and appeared annoyed atfinding that no one had.

George had rather a curious oilskin-covered parcel in hishand. It was round and flat at one end, with a longstraight handle sticking out of it.

“What’s that?” said Harris—“afrying-pan?”

“No,” said George, with a strange, wild lookglittering in his eyes; “they are all the rage this season;everybody has got them up the river. It’s abanjo.”

“I never knew you played the banjo!” cried Harrisand I, in one breath.

“Not exactly,” replied George: “butit’s very easy, they tell me; and I’ve got theinstruction book!”

CHAPTER IX.

George is introduced to work.—Heathenishinstincts of tow-lines.—Ungrateful conduct of adouble-sculling skiff.—Towers and towed.—A usediscovered for lovers.—Strange disappearance of an elderlylady.—Much haste, less speed.—Being towed by girls:exciting sensation.—The missing lock or the hauntedriver.—Music.—Saved!

We made George work, now we had got him. He did not wantto work, of course; that goes without saying. He had had ahard time in the City, so he explained. Harris, who iscallous in his nature, and not prone to pity, said:

“Ah! and now you are going to have a hard time on theriver for a change; change is good for everyone. Out youget!”

He could not in conscience—not even George’sconscience—object, though he did suggest that, perhaps, itwould be better for him to stop in the boat, and get tea ready,while Harris and I towed, because getting tea was such a worryingwork, and Harris and I looked tired. The only reply we madeto this, however, was to pass him over the tow-line, and he tookit, and stepped out.

There is something very strange and unaccountable about atow-line. You roll it up with as much patience and care asyou would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and fiveminutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly,soul-revolting tangle.

I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that ifyou took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straightacross the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it forthirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would findthat it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of thefield, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, andlost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you agood half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing allthe while, to disentangle it again.

That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course,there may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there arenot. There may be tow-lines that are a credit to theirprofession—conscientious, respectabletow-lines—tow-lines that do not imagine they arecrochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassarsthe instant they are left to themselves. I say theremay be such tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are.But I have not met with them.

This tow-line I had taken in myself just before we had got tothe lock. I would not let Harris touch it, because he iscareless. I had looped it round slowly and cautiously, andtied it up in the middle, and folded it in two, and laid it downgently at the bottom of the boat. Harris had lifted it upscientifically, and had put it into George’s hand.George had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and hadbegun to unravel it as if he were taking the swaddling clothesoff a new-born infant; and, before he had unwound a dozen yards,the thing was more like a badly-made door-mat than anythingelse.

It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always goeson in connection with it. The man on the bank, who istrying to disentangle it, thinks all the fault lies with the manwho rolled it up; and when a man up the river thinks a thing, hesays it.

“What have you been trying to do with it, make afishing-net of it? You’ve made a nice mess you have;why couldn’t you wind it up properly, you sillydummy?” he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildlywith it, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round andround it, trying to find the end.

On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the wholecause of the muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwindit.

“It was all right when you took it!” he exclaimsindignantly. “Why don’t you think what you aredoing? You go about things in such a slap-dash style.You’d get a scaffolding pole entangled youwould!”

And they feel so angry with one another that they would liketo hang each other with the thing. Ten minutes go by, andthe first man gives a yell and goes mad, and dances on the rope,and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold of the first piecethat comes to his hand and hauling at it. Of course, thisonly gets it into a tighter tangle than ever. Then thesecond man climbs out of the boat and comes to help him, and theyget in each other’s way, and hinder one another. Theyboth get hold of the same bit of line, and pull at it in oppositedirections, and wonder where it is caught. In the end, theydo get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat hasdrifted off, and is making straight for the weir.

This really happened once to my own knowledge. It was upby Boveney, one rather windy morning. We were pulling downstream, and, as we came round the bend, we noticed a couple ofmen on the bank. They were looking at each other with asbewildered and helplessly miserable expression as I have everwitnessed on any human countenance before or since, and they helda long tow-line between them. It was clear that somethinghad happened, so we eased up and asked them what was thematter.

“Why, our boat’s gone off!” they replied inan indignant tone. “We just got out to disentanglethe tow-line, and when we looked round, it was gone!”

And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a meanand ungrateful act on the part of the boat.

We found the truant for them half a mile further down, held bysome rushes, and we brought it back to them. I bet they didnot give that boat another chance for a week.

I shall never forget the picture of those two men walking upand down the bank with a tow-line, looking for their boat.

One sees a good many funny incidents up the river inconnection with towing. One of the most common is the sightof a couple of towers, walking briskly along, deep in an animateddiscussion, while the man in the boat, a hundred yards behindthem, is vainly shrieking to them to stop, and making franticsigns of distress with a scull. Something has gone wrong;the rudder has come off, or the boat-hook has slipped overboard,or his hat has dropped into the water and is floating rapidlydown stream.

He calls to them to stop, quite gently and politely atfirst.

“Hi! stop a minute, will you?” he shoutscheerily. “I’ve dropped my hatover-board.”

Then: “Hi! Tom—Dick! can’t youhear?” not quite so affably this time.

Then: “Hi! Confound you, you dunder-headedidiots! Hi! stop! Oh you—!”

After that he springs up, and dances about, and roars himselfred in the face, and curses everything he knows. And thesmall boys on the bank stop and jeer at him, and pitch stones athim as he is pulled along past them, at the rate of four miles anhour, and can’t get out.

Much of this sort of trouble would be saved if those who aretowing would keep remembering that they are towing, and give apretty frequent look round to see how their man is gettingon. It is best to let one person tow. When two aredoing it, they get chattering, and forget, and the boat itself,offering, as it does, but little resistance, is of no realservice in reminding them of the fact.

As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can beto their work, George told us, later on in the evening, when wewere discussing the subject after supper, of a very curiousinstance.

He and three other men, so he said, were sculling a veryheavily laden boat up from Maidenhead one evening, and a littleabove Cookham lock they noticed a fellow and a girl, walkingalong the towpath, both deep in an apparently interesting andabsorbing conversation. They were carrying a boat-hookbetween them, and, attached to the boat-hook was a tow-line,which trailed behind them, its end in the water. No boatwas near, no boat was in sight. There must have been a boatattached to that tow-line at some time or other, that wascertain; but what had become of it, what ghastly fate hadovertaken it, and those who had been left in it, was buried inmystery. Whatever the accident may have been, however, ithad in no way disturbed the young lady and gentleman, who weretowing. They had the boat-hook and they had the line, andthat seemed to be all that they thought necessary to theirwork.

George was about to call out and wake them up, but, at thatmoment, a bright idea flashed across him, and hedidn’t. He got the hitcher instead, and reached over,and drew in the end of the tow-line; and they made a loop in it,and put it over their mast, and then they tidied up the sculls,and went and sat down in the stern, and lit their pipes.

And that young man and young woman towed those four hulkingchaps and a heavy boat up to Marlow.

George said he never saw so much thoughtful sadnessconcentrated into one glance before, as when, at the lock, thatyoung couple grasped the idea that, for the last two miles, theyhad been towing the wrong boat. George fancied that, if ithad not been for the restraining influence of the sweet woman athis side, the young man might have given way to violentlanguage.

The maiden was the first to recover from her surprise, and,when she did, she clasped her hands, and said, wildly:

“Oh, Henry, then where is auntie?”

“Did they ever recover the old lady?” askedHarris.

George replied he did not know.

Another example of the dangerous want of sympathy betweentower and towed was witnessed by George and myself once up nearWalton. It was where the tow-path shelves gently down intothe water, and we were camping on the opposite bank, noticingthings in general. By-and-by a small boat came in sight,towed through the water at a tremendous pace by a powerful bargehorse, on which sat a very small boy. Scattered about theboat, in dreamy and reposeful attitudes, lay five fellows, theman who was steering having a particularly restfulappearance.

“I should like to see him pull the wrong line,”murmured George, as they passed. And at that precise momentthe man did it, and the boat rushed up the bank with a noise likethe ripping up of forty thousand linen sheets. Two men, ahamper, and three oars immediately left the boat on the larboardside, and reclined on the bank, and one and a half momentsafterwards, two other men disembarked from the starboard, and satdown among boat-hooks and sails and carpet-bags andbottles. The last man went on twenty yards further, andthen got out on his head.

This seemed to sort of lighten the boat, and it went on mucheasier, the small boy shouting at the top of his voice, andurging his steed into a gallop. The fellows sat up andstared at one another. It was some seconds before theyrealised what had happened to them, but, when they did, theybegan to shout lustily for the boy to stop. He, however,was too much occupied with the horse to hear them, and we watchedthem, flying after him, until the distance hid them fromview.

I cannot say I was sorry at their mishap. Indeed, I onlywish that all the young fools who have their boats towed in thisfashion—and plenty do—could meet with similarmisfortunes. Besides the risk they run themselves, theybecome a danger and an annoyance to every other boat theypass. Going at the pace they do, it is impossible for themto get out of anybody else’s way, or for anybody else toget out of theirs. Their line gets hitched across yourmast, and overturns you, or it catches somebody in the boat, andeither throws them into the water, or cuts their face open.The best plan is to stand your ground, and be prepared to keepthem off with the butt-end of a mast.

Of all experiences in connection with towing, the mostexciting is being towed by girls. It is a sensation thatnobody ought to miss. It takes three girls to tow always;two hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, andgiggles. They generally begin by getting themselves tiedup. They get the line round their legs, and have to sitdown on the path and undo each other, and then they twist itround their necks, and are nearly strangled. They fix itstraight, however, at last, and start off at a run, pulling theboat along at quite a dangerous pace. At the end of ahundred yards they are naturally breathless, and suddenly stop,and all sit down on the grass and laugh, and your boat drifts outto mid-stream and turns round, before you know what has happened,or can get hold of a scull. Then they stand up, and aresurprised.

“Oh, look!” they say; “he’s gone rightout into the middle.”

They pull on pretty steadily for a bit, after this, and thenit all at once occurs to one of them that she will pin up herfrock, and they ease up for the purpose, and the boat runsaground.

You jump up, and push it off, and you shout to them not tostop.

“Yes. What’s the matter?” they shoutback.

“Don’t stop,” you roar.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t stop—go on—go on!”

“Go back, Emily, and see what it is they want,”says one; and Emily comes back, and asks what it is.

“What do you want?” she says; “anythinghappened?”

“No,” you reply, “it’s all right; onlygo on, you know—don’t stop.”

“Why not?”

“Why, we can’t steer, if you keep stopping.You must keep some way on the boat.”

“Keep some what?”

“Some way—you must keep the boatmoving.”

“Oh, all right, I’ll tell ’em. Are wedoing it all right?”

“Oh, yes, very nicely, indeed, only don’tstop.”

“It doesn’t seem difficult at all. I thoughtit was so hard.”

“Oh, no, it’s simple enough. You want tokeep on steady at it, that’s all.”

“I see. Give me out my red shawl, it’s underthe cushion.”

You find the shawl, and hand it out, and by this time anotherone has come back and thinks she will have hers too, and theytake Mary’s on chance, and Mary does not want it, so theybring it back and have a pocket-comb instead. It is abouttwenty minutes before they get off again, and, at the nextcorner, they see a cow, and you have to leave the boat to chivythe cow out of their way.

There is never a dull moment in the boat while girls aretowing it.

George got the line right after a while, and towed us steadilyon to Penton Hook. There we discussed the importantquestion of camping. We had decided to sleep on board thatnight, and we had either to lay up just about there, or go onpast Staines. It seemed early to think about shutting upthen, however, with the sun still in the heavens, and we settledto push straight on for Runnymead, three and a half milesfurther, a quiet wooded part of the river, and where there isgood shelter.

We all wished, however, afterward that we had stopped atPenton Hook. Three or four miles up stream is a trifle,early in the morning, but it is a weary pull at the end of a longday. You take no interest in the scenery during these lastfew miles. You do not chat and laugh. Every half-mileyou cover seems like two. You can hardly believe you areonly where you are, and you are convinced that the map must bewrong; and, when you have trudged along for what seems to you atleast ten miles, and still the lock is not in sight, you begin toseriously fear that somebody must have sneaked it, and run offwith it.

I remember being terribly upset once up the river (in afigurative sense, I mean). I was out with a younglady—cousin on my mother’s side—and we werepulling down to Goring. It was rather late, and we wereanxious to get in—at least she was anxious to getin. It was half-past six when we reached Benson’slock, and dusk was drawing on, and she began to get excitedthen. She said she must be in to supper. I said itwas a thing I felt I wanted to be in at, too; and I drew out amap I had with me to see exactly how far it was. I saw itwas just a mile and a half to the nextlock—Wallingford—and five on from there toCleeve.

“Oh, it’s all right!” I said.“We’ll be through the next lock before seven, andthen there is only one more;” and I settled down and pulledsteadily away.

We passed the bridge, and soon after that I asked if she sawthe lock. She said no, she did not see any lock; and Isaid, “Oh!” and pulled on. Another five minuteswent by, and then I asked her to look again.

“No,” she said; “I can’t see any signsof a lock.”

“You—you are sure you know a lock, when you do seeone?” I asked hesitatingly, not wishing to offend her.

The question did offend her, however, and she suggested that Ihad better look for myself; so I laid down the sculls, and took aview. The river stretched out straight before us in thetwilight for about a mile; not a ghost of a lock was to beseen.

“You don’t think we have lost our way, doyou?” asked my companion.

I did not see how that was possible; though, as I suggested,we might have somehow got into the weir stream, and be making forthe falls.

This idea did not comfort her in the least, and she began tocry. She said we should both be drowned, and that it was ajudgment on her for coming out with me.

It seemed an excessive punishment, I thought; but my cousinthought not, and hoped it would all soon be over.

I tried to reassure her, and to make light of the wholeaffair. I said that the fact evidently was that I was notrowing as fast as I fancied I was, but that we should soon reachthe lock now; and I pulled on for another mile.

Then I began to get nervous myself. I looked again atthe map. There was Wallingford lock, clearly marked, a mileand a half below Benson’s. It was a good, reliablemap; and, besides, I recollected the lock myself. I hadbeen through it twice. Where were we? What hadhappened to us? I began to think it must be all a dream,and that I was really asleep in bed, and should wake up in aminute, and be told it was past ten.

I asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and shereplied that she was just about to ask me the same question; andthen we both wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who wasthe real one that was dreaming, and who was the one that was onlya dream; it got quite interesting.

I still went on pulling, however, and still no lock came insight, and the river grew more and more gloomy and mysteriousunder the gathering shadows of night, and things seemed to begetting weird and uncanny. I thought of hobgoblins andbanshees, and will-o’-the-wisps, and those wicked girls whosit up all night on rocks, and lure people into whirl-pools andthings; and I wished I had been a better man, and knew morehymns; and in the middle of these reflections I heard the blessedstrains of “He’s got ’em on,” played,badly, on a concertina, and knew that we were saved.

I do not admire the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh!how beautiful the music seemed to us both then—far, farmore beautiful than the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo,or anything of that sort could have sounded. Heavenlymelody, in our then state of mind, would only have still furtherharrowed us. A soul-moving harmony, correctly performed, weshould have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up allhope. But about the strains of “He’s got’em on,” jerked spasmodically, and with involuntaryvariations, out of a wheezy accordion, there was somethingsingularly human and reassuring.

The sweet sounds drew nearer, and soon the boat from whichthey were worked lay alongside us.

It contained a party of provincial ’Arrys and’Arriets, out for a moonlight sail. (There was notany moon, but that was not their fault.) I never saw moreattractive, lovable people in all my life. I hailed them,and asked if they could tell me the way to Wallingford lock; andI explained that I had been looking for it for the last twohours.

“Wallingford lock!” they answered.“Lor’ love you, sir, that’s been done away withfor over a year. There ain’t no Wallingford lock now,sir. You’re close to Cleeve now. Blow me tightif ’ere ain’t a gentleman been looking forWallingford lock, Bill!”

I had never thought of that. I wanted to fall upon alltheir necks and bless them; but the stream was running too strongjust there to allow of this, so I had to content myself with merecold-sounding words of gratitude.

We thanked them over and over again, and we said it was alovely night, and we wished them a pleasant trip, and, I think, Iinvited them all to come and spend a week with me, and my cousinsaid her mother would be so pleased to see them. And wesang the soldiers’ chorus out of Faust, and got homein time for supper, after all.

CHAPTER X.

Our first night.—Under canvas.—Anappeal for help.—Contrariness of tea-kettles, how toovercome.—Supper.—How to feel virtuous.—Wanted!a comfortably-appointed, well-drained desert island,neighbourhood of South Pacific Ocean preferred.—Funny thingthat happened to George’s father.—a restlessnight.

Harris and I began to think that Bell Weir lock must have beendone away with after the same manner. George had towed usup to Staines, and we had taken the boat from there, and itseemed that we were dragging fifty tons after us, and werewalking forty miles. It was half-past seven when we werethrough, and we all got in, and sculled up close to the leftbank, looking out for a spot to haul up in.

We had originally intended to go on to Magna Charta Island, asweetly pretty part of the river, where it winds through a soft,green valley, and to camp in one of the many picturesque inletsto be found round that tiny shore. But, somehow, we did notfeel that we yearned for the picturesque nearly so much now as wehad earlier in the day. A bit of water between a coal-bargeand a gas-works would have quite satisfied us for thatnight. We did not want scenery. We wanted to have oursupper and go to bed. However, we did pull up to thepoint—“Picnic Point,” it is called—anddropped into a very pleasant nook under a great elm-tree, to thespreading roots of which we fastened the boat.

Then we thought we were going to have supper (we had dispensedwith tea, so as to save time), but George said no; that we hadbetter get the canvas up first, before it got quite dark, andwhile we could see what we were doing. Then, he said, allour work would be done, and we could sit down to eat with an easymind.

That canvas wanted more putting up than I think any of us hadbargained for. It looked so simple in the abstract.You took five iron arches, like gigantic croquet hoops, andfitted them up over the boat, and then stretched the canvas overthem, and fastened it down: it would take quite ten minutes, wethought.

That was an under-estimate.

We took up the hoops, and began to drop them into the socketsplaced for them. You would not imagine this to be dangerouswork; but, looking back now, the wonder to me is that any of usare alive to tell the tale. They were not hoops, they weredemons. First they would not fit into their sockets at all,and we had to jump on them, and kick them, and hammer at themwith the boat-hook; and, when they were in, it turned out thatthey were the wrong hoops for those particular sockets, and theyhad to come out again.

But they would not come out, until two of us had gone andstruggled with them for five minutes, when they would jump upsuddenly, and try and throw us into the water and drown us.They had hinges in the middle, and, when we were not looking,they nipped us with these hinges in delicate parts of the body;and, while we were wrestling with one side of the hoop, andendeavouring to persuade it to do its duty, the other side wouldcome behind us in a cowardly manner, and hit us over thehead.

We got them fixed at last, and then all that was to be donewas to arrange the covering over them. George unrolled it,and fastened one end over the nose of the boat. Harrisstood in the middle to take it from George and roll it on to me,and I kept by the stern to receive it. It was a long timecoming down to me. George did his part all right, but itwas new work to Harris, and he bungled it.

How he managed it I do not know, he could not explain himself;but by some mysterious process or other he succeeded, after tenminutes of superhuman effort, in getting himself completelyrolled up in it. He was so firmly wrapped round and tuckedin and folded over, that he could not get out. He, ofcourse, made frantic struggles for freedom—the birthrightof every Englishman,—and, in doing so (I learned thisafterwards), knocked over George; and then George, swearing atHarris, began to struggle too, and got himself entangledand rolled up.

I knew nothing about all this at the time. I did notunderstand the business at all myself. I had been told tostand where I was, and wait till the canvas came to me, andMontmorency and I stood there and waited, both as good asgold. We could see the canvas being violently jerked andtossed about, pretty considerably; but we supposed this was partof the method, and did not interfere.

We also heard much smothered language coming from underneathit, and we guessed that they were finding the job rathertroublesome, and concluded that we would wait until things hadgot a little simpler before we joined in.

We waited some time, but matters seemed to get only more andmore involved, until, at last, George’s head came wrigglingout over the side of the boat, and spoke up.

It said:

“Give us a hand here, can’t you, you cuckoo;standing there like a stuffed mummy, when you see we are bothbeing suffocated, you dummy!”

I never could withstand an appeal for help, so I went andundid them; not before it was time, either, for Harris was nearlyblack in the face.

It took us half an hour’s hard labour, after that,before it was properly up, and then we cleared the decks, and gotout supper. We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose ofthe boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take nonotice of it, but set to work to get the other things out.

That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up theriver. If it sees that you are waiting for it and areanxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away andbegin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea atall. You must not even look round at it. Then youwill soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.

It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talkvery loudly to each other about how you don’t need any tea,and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, sothat it can overhear you, and then you shout out, “Idon’t want any tea; do you, George?” to which Georgeshouts back, “Oh, no, I don’t like tea; we’llhave lemonade instead—tea’s soindigestible.” Upon which the kettle boils over, andputs the stove out.

We adopted this harmless bit of trickery, and the result wasthat, by the time everything else was ready, the tea waswaiting. Then we lit the lantern, and squatted down tosupper.

We wanted that supper.

For five-and-thirty minutes not a sound was heard throughoutthe length and breadth of that boat, save the clank of cutleryand crockery, and the steady grinding of four sets ofmolars. At the end of five-and-thirty minutes, Harris said,“Ah!” and took his left leg out from under him andput his right one there instead.

Five minutes afterwards, George said, “Ah!” too,and threw his plate out on the bank; and, three minutes laterthan that, Montmorency gave the first sign of contentment he hadexhibited since we had started, and rolled over on his side, andspread his legs out; and then I said, “Ah!” and bentmy head back, and bumped it against one of the hoops, but I didnot mind it. I did not even swear.

How good one feels when one is full—how satisfied withourselves and with the world! People who have tried it,tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy andcontented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well,and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels soforgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digestedmeal—so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.

It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by ourdigestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unlessour stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, ourpassions. After eggs and bacon, it says,“Work!” After beefsteak and porter, it says,“Sleep!” After a cup of tea (two spoonsful foreach cup, and don’t let it stand more than three minutes),it says to the brain, “Now, rise, and show yourstrength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with aclear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings ofquivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirlingworld beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to thegates of eternity!”

After hot muffins, it says, “Be dull and soulless, likea beast of the field—a brainless animal, with listless eye,unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, orlife.” And after brandy, taken in sufficientquantity, it says, “Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, thatyour fellow-men may laugh—drivel in folly, and splutter insenseless sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor manwhose wit and will are drowned, like kittens, side by side, inhalf an inch of alcohol.”

We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach.Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watchvigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care andjudgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reignwithin your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and youwill be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tenderfather—a noble, pious man.

Before our supper, Harris and George and I were quarrelsomeand snappy and ill-tempered; after our supper, we sat and beamedon one another, and we beamed upon the dog, too. We lovedeach other, we loved everybody. Harris, in moving about,trod on George’s corn. Had this happened beforesupper, George would have expressed wishes and desires concerningHarris’s fate in this world and the next that would havemade a thoughtful man shudder.

As it was, he said: “Steady, old man; ’warewheat.”

And Harris, instead of merely observing, in his mostunpleasant tones, that a fellow could hardly help treading onsome bit of George’s foot, if he had to move about at allwithin ten yards of where George was sitting, suggesting thatGeorge never ought to come into an ordinary sized boat with feetthat length, and advising him to hang them over the side, as hewould have done before supper, now said: “Oh, I’m sosorry, old chap; I hope I haven’t hurt you.”

And George said: “Not at all;” that it was hisfault; and Harris said no, it was his.

It was quite pretty to hear them.

We lit our pipes, and sat, looking out on the quiet night, andtalked.

George said why could not we be always like this—awayfrom the world, with its sin and temptation, leading sober,peaceful lives, and doing good. I said it was the sort ofthing I had often longed for myself; and we discussed thepossibility of our going away, we four, to some handy,well-fitted desert island, and living there in the woods.

Harris said that the danger about desert islands, as far as hehad heard, was that they were so damp: but George said no, not ifproperly drained.

And then we got on to drains, and that put George in mind of avery funny thing that happened to his father once. He saidhis father was travelling with another fellow through Wales, and,one night, they stopped at a little inn, where there were someother fellows, and they joined the other fellows, and spent theevening with them.

They had a very jolly evening, and sat up late, and, by thetime they came to go to bed, they (this was when George’sfather was a very young man) were slightly jolly, too. They(George’s father and George’s father’s friend)were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds. Theytook the candle, and went up. The candle lurched up againstthe wall when they got into the room, and went out, and they hadto undress and grope into bed in the dark. This they did;but, instead of getting into separate beds, as they thought theywere doing, they both climbed into the same one without knowingit—one getting in with his head at the top, and the othercrawling in from the opposite side of the compass, and lying withhis feet on the pillow.

There was silence for a moment, and then George’s fathersaid:

“Joe!”

“What’s the matter, Tom?” repliedJoe’s voice from the other end of the bed.

“Why, there’s a man in my bed,” saidGeorge’s father; “here’s his feet on mypillow.”

“Well, it’s an extraordinary thing, Tom,”answered the other; “but I’m blest if thereisn’t a man in my bed, too!”

“What are you going to do?” asked George’sfather.

“Well, I’m going to chuck him out,” repliedJoe.

“So am I,” said George’s father,valiantly.

There was a brief struggle, followed by two heavy bumps on thefloor, and then a rather doleful voice said:

“I say, Tom!”

“Yes!”

“How have you got on?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, my man’s chuckedme out.”

“So’s mine! I say, I don’t think muchof this inn, do you?”

“What was the name of that inn?” said Harris.

“The Pig and Whistle,” said George.“Why?”

“Ah, no, then it isn’t the same,” repliedHarris.

“What do you mean?” queried George.

“Why it’s so curious,” murmured Harris,“but precisely that very same thing happened to myfather once at a country inn. I’ve often heard himtell the tale. I thought it might have been the sameinn.”

We turned in at ten that night, and I thought I should sleepwell, being tired; but I didn’t. As a rule, I undressand put my head on the pillow, and then somebody bangs at thedoor, and says it is half-past eight: but, to-night, everythingseemed against me; the novelty of it all, the hardness of theboat, the cramped position (I was lying with my feet under oneseat, and my head on another), the sound of the lapping waterround the boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me restlessand disturbed.

I did get to sleep for a few hours, and then some part of theboat which seemed to have grown up in the night—for itcertainly was not there when we started, and it had disappearedby the morning—kept digging into my spine. I sleptthrough it for a while, dreaming that I had swallowed asovereign, and that they were cutting a hole in my back with agimlet, so as to try and get it out. I thought it veryunkind of them, and I told them I would owe them the money, andthey should have it at the end of the month. But they wouldnot hear of that, and said it would be much better if they had itthen, because otherwise the interest would accumulate so. Igot quite cross with them after a bit, and told them what Ithought of them, and then they gave the gimlet such anexcruciating wrench that I woke up.

The boat seemed stuffy, and my head ached; so I thought Iwould step out into the cool night-air. I slipped on whatclothes I could find about—some of my own, and some ofGeorge’s and Harris’s—and crept under thecanvas on to the bank.

It was a glorious night. The moon had sunk, and left thequiet earth alone with the stars. It seemed as if, in thesilence and the hush, while we her children slept, they weretalking with her, their sister—conversing of mightymysteries in voices too vast and deep for childish human ears tocatch the sound.

They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. Weare as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-littemple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not;and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of theshadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see someawful vision hovering there.

And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, thenight. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away,ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and ourhearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and theworld has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, likesome great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our feveredhead, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, andsmiles; and, though she does not speak, we know what she wouldsay, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and thepain is gone.

Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand beforeher very silent, because there is no language for our pain, onlya moan. Night’s heart is full of pity for us: shecannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and thelittle world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and,borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightierPresence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that greatPresence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we knowthat Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.

Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look uponthat wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak ofit, or tell the mystery they know.

Once upon a time, through a strange country, there rode somegoodly knights, and their path lay by a deep wood, where tangledbriars grew very thick and strong, and tore the flesh of themthat lost their way therein. And the leaves of the treesthat grew in the wood were very dark and thick, so that no ray oflight came through the branches to lighten the gloom andsadness.

And, as they passed by that dark wood, one knight of thosethat rode, missing his comrades, wandered far away, and returnedto them no more; and they, sorely grieving, rode on without him,mourning him as one dead.

Now, when they reached the fair castle towards which they hadbeen journeying, they stayed there many days, and made merry; andone night, as they sat in cheerful ease around the logs thatburned in the great hall, and drank a loving measure, there camethe comrade they had lost, and greeted them. His clotheswere ragged, like a beggar’s, and many sad wounds were onhis sweet flesh, but upon his face there shone a great radianceof deep joy.

And they questioned him, asking him what had befallen him: andhe told them how in the dark wood he had lost his way, and hadwandered many days and nights, till, torn and bleeding, he hadlain him down to die.

Then, when he was nigh unto death, lo! through the savagegloom there came to him a stately maiden, and took him by thehand and led him on through devious paths, unknown to any man,until upon the darkness of the wood there dawned a light such asthe light of day was unto but as a little lamp unto the sun; and,in that wondrous light, our way-worn knight saw as in a dream avision, and so glorious, so fair the vision seemed, that of hisbleeding wounds he thought no more, but stood as one entranced,whose joy is deep as is the sea, whereof no man can tell thedepth.

And the vision faded, and the knight, kneeling upon theground, thanked the good saint who into that sad wood had strayedhis steps, so he had seen the vision that lay there hid.

And the name of the dark forest was Sorrow; but of the visionthat the good knight saw therein we may not speak nor tell.

CHAPTER XI.

How George, once upon a time, got up early inthe morning.—George, Harris, and Montmorency do not likethe look of the cold water.—Heroism and determination onthe part of J.—George and his shirt: story with amoral.—Harris as cook.—Historical retrospect,specially inserted for the use of schools.

I woke at six the next morning; and found George awaketoo. We both turned round, and tried to go to sleep again,but we could not. Had there been any particular reason whywe should not have gone to sleep again, but have got up anddressed then and there, we should have dropped off while we werelooking at our watches, and have slept till ten. As therewas no earthly necessity for our getting up under another twohours at the very least, and our getting up at that time was anutter absurdity, it was only in keeping with the naturalcussedness of things in general that we should both feel thatlying down for five minutes more would be death to us.

George said that the same kind of thing, only worse, hadhappened to him some eighteen months ago, when he was lodging byhimself in the house of a certain Mrs. Gippings. He saidhis watch went wrong one evening, and stopped at a quarter-pasteight. He did not know this at the time because, for somereason or other, he forgot to wind it up when he went to bed (anunusual occurrence with him), and hung it up over his pillowwithout ever looking at the thing.

It was in the winter when this happened, very near theshortest day, and a week of fog into the bargain, so the factthat it was still very dark when George woke in the morning wasno guide to him as to the time. He reached up, and hauleddown his watch. It was a quarter-past eight.

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”exclaimed George; “and here have I got to be in the City bynine. Why didn’t somebody call me? Oh, this isa shame!” And he flung the watch down, and sprang outof bed, and had a cold bath, and washed himself, and dressedhimself, and shaved himself in cold water because there was nottime to wait for the hot, and then rushed and had another look atthe watch.

Whether the shaking it had received in being thrown down onthe bed had started it, or how it was, George could not say, butcertain it was that from a quarter-past eight it had begun to go,and now pointed to twenty minutes to nine.

George snatched it up, and rushed downstairs. In thesitting-room, all was dark and silent: there was no fire, nobreakfast. George said it was a wicked shame of Mrs. G.,and he made up his mind to tell her what he thought of her whenhe came home in the evening. Then he dashed on hisgreat-coat and hat, and, seizing his umbrella, made for the frontdoor. The door was not even unbolted. Georgeanathematized Mrs. G. for a lazy old woman, and thought it wasvery strange that people could not get up at a decent,respectable time, unlocked and unbolted the door, and ranout.

He ran hard for a quarter of a mile, and at the end of thatdistance it began to be borne in upon him as a strange andcurious thing that there were so few people about, and that therewere no shops open. It was certainly a very dark and foggymorning, but still it seemed an unusual course to stop allbusiness on that account. He had to go to business:why should other people stop in bed merely because it was darkand foggy!

At length he reached Holborn. Not a shutter was down!not a bus was about! There were three men in sight, one ofwhom was a policeman; a market-cart full of cabbages, and adilapidated looking cab. George pulled out his watch andlooked at it: it was five minutes to nine! He stood stilland counted his pulse. He stooped down and felt hislegs. Then, with his watch still in his hand, he went up tothe policeman, and asked him if he knew what the time was.

“What’s the time?” said the man, eyeingGeorge up and down with evident suspicion; “why, if youlisten you will hear it strike.”

George listened, and a neighbouring clock immediatelyobliged.

“But it’s only gone three!” said George inan injured tone, when it had finished.

“Well, and how many did you want it to go?”replied the constable.

“Why, nine,” said George, showing his watch.

“Do you know where you live?” said the guardian ofpublic order, severely.

George thought, and gave the address.

“Oh! that’s where it is, is it?” replied theman; “well, you take my advice and go there quietly, andtake that watch of yours with you; and don’t let’shave any more of it.”

And George went home again, musing as he walked along, and lethimself in.

At first, when he got in, he determined to undress and go tobed again; but when he thought of the redressing and re-washing,and the having of another bath, he determined he would not, butwould sit up and go to sleep in the easy-chair.

But he could not get to sleep: he never felt more wakeful inhis life; so he lit the lamp and got out the chess-board, andplayed himself a game of chess. But even that did notenliven him: it seemed slow somehow; so he gave chess up andtried to read. He did not seem able to take any sort ofinterest in reading either, so he put on his coat again and wentout for a walk.

It was horribly lonesome and dismal, and all the policemen hemet regarded him with undisguised suspicion, and turned theirlanterns on him and followed him about, and this had such aneffect upon him at last that he began to feel as if he really haddone something, and he got to slinking down the by-streets andhiding in dark doorways when he heard the regulation flip-flopapproaching.

Of course, this conduct made the force only more distrustfulof him than ever, and they would come and rout him out and askhim what he was doing there; and when he answered,“Nothing,” he had merely come out for a stroll (itwas then four o’clock in the morning), they looked asthough they did not believe him, and two plain-clothes constablescame home with him to see if he really did live where he had saidhe did. They saw him go in with his key, and then they tookup a position opposite and watched the house.

He thought he would light the fire when he got inside, andmake himself some breakfast, just to pass away the time; but hedid not seem able to handle anything from a scuttleful of coalsto a teaspoon without dropping it or falling over it, and makingsuch a noise that he was in mortal fear that it would wake Mrs.G. up, and that she would think it was burglars and open thewindow and call “Police!” and then these twodetectives would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off tothe police-court.

He was in a morbidly nervous state by this time, and hepictured the trial, and his trying to explain the circ*mstancesto the jury, and nobody believing him, and his being sentenced totwenty years’ penal servitude, and his mother dying of abroken heart. So he gave up trying to get breakfast, andwrapped himself up in his overcoat and sat in the easy-chair tillMrs. G came down at half-past seven.

He said he had never got up too early since that morning: ithad been such a warning to him.

We had been sitting huddled up in our rugs while George hadbeen telling me this true story, and on his finishing it I set towork to wake up Harris with a scull. The third prod did it:and he turned over on the other side, and said he would be downin a minute, and that he would have his lace-up boots. Wesoon let him know where he was, however, by the aid of thehitcher, and he sat up suddenly, sending Montmorency, who hadbeen sleeping the sleep of the just right on the middle of hischest, sprawling across the boat.

Then we pulled up the canvas, and all four of us poked ourheads out over the off-side, and looked down at the water andshivered. The idea, overnight, had been that we should getup early in the morning, fling off our rugs and shawls, and,throwing back the canvas, spring into the river with a joyousshout, and revel in a long delicious swim. Somehow, now themorning had come, the notion seemed less tempting. Thewater looked damp and chilly: the wind felt cold.

“Well, who’s going to be first in?” saidHarris at last.

There was no rush for precedence. George settled thematter so far as he was concerned by retiring into the boat andpulling on his socks. Montmorency gave vent to aninvoluntary howl, as if merely thinking of the thing had givenhim the horrors; and Harris said it would be so difficult to getinto the boat again, and went back and sorted out histrousers.

I did not altogether like to give in, though I did not relishthe plunge. There might be snags about, or weeds, Ithought. I meant to compromise matters by going down to theedge and just throwing the water over myself; so I took a toweland crept out on the bank and wormed my way along on to thebranch of a tree that dipped down into the water.

It was bitterly cold. The wind cut like a knife.I thought I would not throw the water over myself afterall. I would go back into the boat and dress; and I turnedto do so; and, as I turned, the silly branch gave way, and I andthe towel went in together with a tremendous splash, and I wasout mid-stream with a gallon of Thames water inside me before Iknew what had happened.

“By Jove! old J.’s gone in,” I heard Harrissay, as I came blowing to the surface. “Ididn’t think he’d have the pluck to do it. Didyou?”

“Is it all right?” sung out George.

“Lovely,” I spluttered back. “You areduffers not to come in. I wouldn’t have missed thisfor worlds. Why won’t you try it? It only wantsa little determination.”

But I could not persuade them.

Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing thatmorning. I was very cold when I got back into the boat,and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked itinto the water. It made me awfully wild, especially asGeorge burst out laughing. I could not see anything tolaugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed themore. I never saw a man laugh so much. I quite lostmy temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what adrivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roaredthe louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, Inoticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George’s,which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thingstruck me for the first time, and I began to laugh. And themore I looked from George’s wet shirt to George, roaringwith laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much thatI had to let the shirt fall back into the water again.

“Ar’n’t you—you—going to get itout?” said George, between his shrieks.

I could not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing so,but, at last, between my peals I managed to jerk out:

“It isn’t my shirt—it’syours!”

I never saw a man’s face change from lively to severe sosuddenly in all my life before.

“What!” he yelled, springing up. “Yousilly cuckoo! Why can’t you be more careful whatyou’re doing? Why the deuce don’t you go anddress on the bank? You’re not fit to be in a boat,you’re not. Gimme the hitcher.”

I tried to make him see the fun of the thing, but he couldnot. George is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.

Harris proposed that we should have scrambled eggs forbreakfast. He said he would cook them. It seemed,from his account, that he was very good at doing scrambledeggs. He often did them at picnics and when out onyachts. He was quite famous for them. People who hadonce tasted his scrambled eggs, so we gathered from hisconversation, never cared for any other food afterwards, butpined away and died when they could not get them.

It made our mouths water to hear him talk about the things,and we handed him out the stove and the frying-pan and all theeggs that had not smashed and gone over everything in the hamper,and begged him to begin.

He had some trouble in breaking the eggs—or rather notso much trouble in breaking them exactly as in getting them intothe frying-pan when broken, and keeping them off his trousers,and preventing them from running up his sleeve; but he fixed somehalf-a-dozen into the pan at last, and then squatted down by theside of the stove and chivied them about with a fork.

It seemed harassing work, so far as George and I couldjudge. Whenever he went near the pan he burned himself, andthen he would drop everything and dance round the stove, flickinghis fingers about and cursing the things. Indeed, everytime George and I looked round at him he was sure to beperforming this feat. We thought at first that it was anecessary part of the culinary arrangements.

We did not know what scrambled eggs were, and we fancied thatit must be some Red Indian or Sandwich Islands sort of dish thatrequired dances and incantations for its proper cooking.Montmorency went and put his nose over it once, and the fatspluttered up and scalded him, and then he began dancingand cursing. Altogether it was one of the most interestingand exciting operations I have ever witnessed. George and Iwere both quite sorry when it was over.

The result was not altogether the success that Harris hadanticipated. There seemed so little to show for thebusiness. Six eggs had gone into the frying-pan, and allthat came out was a teaspoonful of burnt and unappetizing lookingmess.

Harris said it was the fault of the frying-pan, and thought itwould have gone better if we had had a fish-kettle and agas-stove; and we decided not to attempt the dish again until wehad those aids to housekeeping by us.

The sun had got more powerful by the time we had finishedbreakfast, and the wind had dropped, and it was as lovely amorning as one could desire. Little was in sight to remindus of the nineteenth century; and, as we looked out upon theriver in the morning sunlight, we could almost fancy that thecenturies between us and that ever-to-be-famous June morning of1215 had been drawn aside, and that we, English yeomen’ssons in homespun cloth, with dirk at belt, were waiting there towitness the writing of that stupendous page of history, themeaning whereof was to be translated to the common people somefour hundred and odd years later by one Oliver Cromwell, who haddeeply studied it.

It is a fine summer morning—sunny, soft, andstill. But through the air there runs a thrill of comingstir. King John has slept at Duncroft Hall, and all the daybefore the little town of Staines has echoed to the clang ofarmed men, and the clatter of great horses over its rough stones,and the shouts of captains, and the grim oaths and surly jests ofbearded bowmen, billmen, pikemen, and strange-speaking foreignspearmen.

Gay-cloaked companies of knights and squires have ridden in,all travel-stained and dusty. And all the evening long thetimid townsmen’s doors have had to be quick opened to letin rough groups of soldiers, for whom there must be found bothboard and lodging, and the best of both, or woe betide the houseand all within; for the sword is judge and jury, plaintiff andexecutioner, in these tempestuous times, and pays for what ittakes by sparing those from whom it takes it, if it pleases it todo so.

Round the camp-fire in the market-place gather still more ofthe Barons’ troops, and eat and drink deep, and bellowforth roystering drinking songs, and gamble and quarrel as theevening grows and deepens into night. The firelight shedsquaint shadows on their piled-up arms and on their uncouthforms. The children of the town steal round to watch them,wondering; and brawny country wenches, laughing, draw near tobandy ale-house jest and jibe with the swaggering troopers, sounlike the village swains, who, now despised, stand apart behind,with vacant grins upon their broad, peering faces. And outfrom the fields around, glitter the faint lights of more distantcamps, as here some great lord’s followers lie mustered,and there false John’s French mercenaries hover likecrouching wolves without the town.

And so, with sentinel in each dark street, and twinklingwatch-fires on each height around, the night has worn away, andover this fair valley of old Thame has broken the morning of thegreat day that is to close so big with the fate of ages yetunborn.

Ever since grey dawn, in the lower of the two islands, justabove where we are standing, there has been great clamour, andthe sound of many workmen. The great pavilion brought thereyester eve is being raised, and carpenters are busy nailing tiersof seats, while ’prentices from London town are there withmany-coloured stuffs and silks and cloth of gold and silver.

And now, lo! down upon the road that winds along theriver’s bank from Staines there come towards us, laughingand talking together in deep guttural bass, a half-a-score ofstalwart halbert-men—Barons’ men, these—andhalt at a hundred yards or so above us, on the other bank, andlean upon their arms, and wait.

And so, from hour to hour, march up along the road ever freshgroups and bands of armed men, their casques and breastplatesflashing back the long low lines of morning sunlight, until, asfar as eye can reach, the way seems thick with glittering steeland prancing steeds. And shouting horsem*n are gallopingfrom group to group, and little banners are fluttering lazily inthe warm breeze, and every now and then there is a deeper stir asthe ranks make way on either side, and some great Baron on hiswar-horse, with his guard of squires around him, passes along totake his station at the head of his serfs and vassals.

And up the slope of Cooper’s Hill, just opposite, aregathered the wondering rustics and curious townsfolk, who haverun from Staines, and none are quite sure what the bustle isabout, but each one has a different version of the great eventthat they have come to see; and some say that much good to allthe people will come from this day’s work; but the old menshake their heads, for they have heard such tales before.

And all the river down to Staines is dotted with small craftand boats and tiny coracles—which last are growing out offavour now, and are used only by the poorer folk. Over therapids, where in after years trim Bell Weir lock will stand, theyhave been forced or dragged by their sturdy rowers, and now arecrowding up as near as they dare come to the great coveredbarges, which lie in readiness to bear King John to where thefateful Charter waits his signing.

It is noon, and we and all the people have been waitingpatient for many an hour, and the rumour has run round thatslippery John has again escaped from the Barons’ grasp, andhas stolen away from Duncroft Hall with his mercenaries at hisheels, and will soon be doing other work than signing chartersfor his people’s liberty.

Not so! This time the grip upon him has been one ofiron, and he has slid and wriggled in vain. Far down theroad a little cloud of dust has risen, and draws nearer and growslarger, and the pattering of many hoofs grows louder, and in andout between the scattered groups of drawn-up men, there pushes onits way a brilliant cavalcade of gay-dressed lords andknights. And front and rear, and either flank, there ridethe yeomen of the Barons, and in the midst King John.

He rides to where the barges lie in readiness, and the greatBarons step forth from their ranks to meet him. He greetsthem with a smile and laugh, and pleasant honeyed words, asthough it were some feast in his honour to which he had beeninvited. But as he rises to dismount, he casts one hurriedglance from his own French mercenaries drawn up in the rear tothe grim ranks of the Barons’ men that hem him in.

Is it too late? One fierce blow at the unsuspectinghorseman at his side, one cry to his French troops, one desperatecharge upon the unready lines before him, and these rebelliousBarons might rue the day they dared to thwart his plans! Abolder hand might have turned the game even at that point.Had it been a Richard there! the cup of liberty might have beendashed from England’s lips, and the taste of freedom heldback for a hundred years.

But the heart of King John sinks before the stern faces of theEnglish fighting men, and the arm of King John drops back on tohis rein, and he dismounts and takes his seat in the foremostbarge. And the Barons follow in, with each mailed hand uponthe sword-hilt, and the word is given to let go.

Slowly the heavy, bright-decked barges leave the shore ofRunningmede. Slowly against the swift current they worktheir ponderous way, till, with a low grumble, they grate againstthe bank of the little island that from this day will bear thename of Magna Charta Island. And King John has stepped uponthe shore, and we wait in breathless silence till a great shoutcleaves the air, and the great cornerstone in England’stemple of liberty has, now we know, been firmly laid.

CHAPTER XII.

Henry VIII. and AnneBoleyn.—Disadvantages of living in same house with pair oflovers.—A trying time for the English nation.—A nightsearch for the picturesque.—Homeless andhouseless.—Harris prepares to die.—An angel comesalong.—Effect of sudden joy on Harris.—A littlesupper.—Lunch.—High price for mustard.—Afearful battle.—Maidenhead.—Sailing.—Threefishers.—We are cursed.

I was sitting on the bank, conjuring up this scene to myself,when George remarked that when I was quite rested, perhaps Iwould not mind helping to wash up; and, thus recalled from thedays of the glorious past to the prosaic present, with all itsmisery and sin, I slid down into the boat and cleaned out thefrying-pan with a stick of wood and a tuft of grass, polishing itup finally with George’s wet shirt.

We went over to Magna Charta Island, and had a look at thestone which stands in the cottage there and on which the greatCharter is said to have been signed; though, as to whether itreally was signed there, or, as some say, on the other bank at“Runningmede,” I decline to commit myself. Asfar as my own personal opinion goes, however, I am inclined togive weight to the popular island theory. Certainly, had Ibeen one of the Barons, at the time, I should have strongly urgedupon my comrades the advisability of our getting such a slipperycustomer as King John on to the island, where there was lesschance of surprises and tricks.

There are the ruins of an old priory in the grounds ofAnkerwyke House, which is close to Picnic Point, and it was roundabout the grounds of this old priory that Henry VIII. is said tohave waited for and met Anne Boleyn. He also used to meether at Hever Castle in Kent, and also somewhere near St.Albans. It must have been difficult for the people ofEngland in those days to have found a spot where thesethoughtless young folk were not spooning.

Have you ever been in a house where there are a couplecourting? It is most trying. You think you will goand sit in the drawing-room, and you march off there. Asyou open the door, you hear a noise as if somebody had suddenlyrecollected something, and, when you get in, Emily is over by thewindow, full of interest in the opposite side of the road, andyour friend, John Edward, is at the other end of the room withhis whole soul held in thrall by photographs of otherpeople’s relatives.

“Oh!” you say, pausing at the door, “Ididn’t know anybody was here.”

“Oh! didn’t you?” says Emily, coldly, in atone which implies that she does not believe you.

You hang about for a bit, then you say:

“It’s very dark. Why don’t you lightthe gas?”

John Edward says, “Oh!” he hadn’t noticedit; and Emily says that papa does not like the gas lit in theafternoon.

You tell them one or two items of news, and give them yourviews and opinions on the Irish question; but this does notappear to interest them. All they remark on any subject is,“Oh!” “Is it?” “Didhe?” “Yes,” and “You don’t sayso!” And, after ten minutes of such style ofconversation, you edge up to the door, and slip out, and aresurprised to find that the door immediately closes behind you,and shuts itself, without your having touched it.

Half an hour later, you think you will try a pipe in theconservatory. The only chair in the place is occupied byEmily; and John Edward, if the language of clothes can be reliedupon, has evidently been sitting on the floor. They do notspeak, but they give you a look that says all that can be said ina civilised community; and you back out promptly and shut thedoor behind you.

You are afraid to poke your nose into any room in the housenow; so, after walking up and down the stairs for a while, you goand sit in your own bedroom. This becomes uninteresting,however, after a time, and so you put on your hat and stroll outinto the garden. You walk down the path, and as you passthe summer-house you glance in, and there are those two youngidiots, huddled up into one corner of it; and they see you, andare evidently under the idea that, for some wicked purpose ofyour own, you are following them about.

“Why don’t they have a special room for this sortof thing, and make people keep to it?” you mutter; and yourush back to the hall and get your umbrella and go out.

It must have been much like this when that foolish boy HenryVIII. was courting his little Anne. People inBuckinghamshire would have come upon them unexpectedly when theywere mooning round Windsor and Wraysbury, and have exclaimed,“Oh! you here!” and Henry would have blushed andsaid, “Yes; he’d just come over to see a man;”and Anne would have said, “Oh, I’m so glad to seeyou! Isn’t it funny? I’ve just met Mr.Henry VIII. in the lane, and he’s going the same way Iam.”

Then those people would have gone away and said to themselves:“Oh! we’d better get out of here while this billingand cooing is on. We’ll go down to Kent.”

And they would go to Kent, and the first thing they would seein Kent, when they got there, would be Henry and Anne foolinground Hever Castle.

“Oh, drat this!” they would have said.“Here, let’s go away. I can’t stand anymore of it. Let’s go to St. Albans—nice quietplace, St. Albans.”

And when they reached St. Albans, there would be that wretchedcouple, kissing under the Abbey walls. Then these folkswould go and be pirates until the marriage was over.

From Picnic Point to Old Windsor Lock is a delightful bit ofthe river. A shady road, dotted here and there with daintylittle cottages, runs by the bank up to the “Bells ofOuseley,” a picturesque inn, as most up-river inns are, anda place where a very good glass of ale may be drunk—soHarris says; and on a matter of this kind you can takeHarris’s word. Old Windsor is a famous spot in itsway. Edward the Confessor had a palace here, and here thegreat Earl Godwin was proved guilty by the justice of that age ofhaving encompassed the death of the King’s brother.Earl Godwin broke a piece of bread and held it in his hand.

“If I am guilty,” said the Earl, “may thisbread choke me when I eat it!”

Then he put the bread into his mouth and swallowed it, and itchoked him, and he died.

After you pass Old Windsor, the river is somewhatuninteresting, and does not become itself again until you arenearing Boveney. George and I towed up past the Home Park,which stretches along the right bank from Albert to VictoriaBridge; and as we were passing Datchet, George asked me if Iremembered our first trip up the river, and when we landed atDatchet at ten o’clock at night, and wanted to go tobed.

I answered that I did remember it. It will be some timebefore I forget it.

It was the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday. Wewere tired and hungry, we same three, and when we got to Datchetwe took out the hamper, the two bags, and the rugs and coats, andsuch like things, and started off to look for diggings. Wepassed a very pretty little hotel, with clematis and creeper overthe porch; but there was no honeysuckle about it, and, for somereason or other, I had got my mind fixed on honeysuckle, and Isaid:

“Oh, don’t let’s go in there!Let’s go on a bit further, and see if there isn’t onewith honeysuckle over it.”

So we went on till we came to another hotel. That was avery nice hotel, too, and it had honey-suckle on it, round at theside; but Harris did not like the look of a man who was leaningagainst the front door. He said he didn’t look a niceman at all, and he wore ugly boots: so we went on further.We went a goodish way without coming across any more hotels, andthen we met a man, and asked him to direct us to a few.

He said:

“Why, you are coming away from them. You must turnright round and go back, and then you will come to theStag.”

We said:

“Oh, we had been there, and didn’t likeit—no honeysuckle over it.”

“Well, then,” he said, “there’s theManor House, just opposite. Have you tried that?”

Harris replied that we did not want to gothere—didn’t like the looks of a man who was stoppingthere—Harris did not like the colour of his hair,didn’t like his boots, either.

“Well, I don’t know what you’ll do,I’m sure,” said our informant; “because theyare the only two inns in the place.”

“No other inns!” exclaimed Harris.

“None,” replied the man.

“What on earth are we to do?” cried Harris.

Then George spoke up. He said Harris and I could get anhotel built for us, if we liked, and have some people made to putin. For his part, he was going back to the Stag.

The greatest minds never realise their ideals in any matter;and Harris and I sighed over the hollowness of all earthlydesires, and followed George.

We took our traps into the Stag, and laid them down in thehall.

The landlord came up and said:

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

“Oh, good evening,” said George; “we wantthree beds, please.”

“Very sorry, sir,” said the landlord; “butI’m afraid we can’t manage it.”

“Oh, well, never mind,” said George, “twowill do. Two of us can sleep in one bed, can’twe?” he continued, turning to Harris and me.

Harris said, “Oh, yes;” he thought George and Icould sleep in one bed very easily.

“Very sorry, sir,” again repeated the landlord:“but we really haven’t got a bed vacant in the wholehouse. In fact, we are putting two, and even threegentlemen in one bed, as it is.”

This staggered us for a bit.

But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose to the occasion,and, laughing cheerily, said:

“Oh, well, we can’t help it. We must roughit. You must give us a shake-down in thebilliard-room.”

“Very sorry, sir. Three gentlemen sleeping on thebilliard-table already, and two in the coffee-room.Can’t possibly take you in to-night.”

We picked up our things, and went over to the ManorHouse. It was a pretty little place. I said I thoughtI should like it better than the other house; and Harris said,“Oh, yes,” it would be all right, and weneedn’t look at the man with the red hair; besides, thepoor fellow couldn’t help having red hair.

Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly about it.

The people at the Manor House did not wait to hear ustalk. The landlady met us on the doorstep with the greetingthat we were the fourteenth party she had turned away within thelast hour and a half. As for our meek suggestions ofstables, billiard-room, or coal-cellars, she laughed them all toscorn: all these nooks had been snatched up long ago.

Did she know of any place in the whole village where we couldget shelter for the night?

“Well, if we didn’t mind roughing it—she didnot recommend it, mind—but there was a little beershop halfa mile down the Eton road—”

We waited to hear no more; we caught up the hamper and thebags, and the coats and rugs, and parcels, and ran. Thedistance seemed more like a mile than half a mile, but we reachedthe place at last, and rushed, panting, into the bar.

The people at the beershop were rude. They merelylaughed at us. There were only three beds in the wholehouse, and they had seven single gentlemen and two marriedcouples sleeping there already. A kind-hearted bargeman,however, who happened to be in the tap-room, thought we might trythe grocer’s, next door to the Stag, and we went back.

The grocer’s was full. An old woman we met in theshop then kindly took us along with her for a quarter of a mile,to a lady friend of hers, who occasionally let rooms togentlemen.

This old woman walked very slowly, and we were twenty minutesgetting to her lady friend’s. She enlivened thejourney by describing to us, as we trailed along, the variouspains she had in her back.

Her lady friend’s rooms were let. From there wewere recommended to No. 27. No. 27 was full, and sent us toNo. 32, and 32 was full.

Then we went back into the high road, and Harris sat down onthe hamper and said he would go no further. He said itseemed a quiet spot, and he would like to die there. Herequested George and me to kiss his mother for him, and to tellall his relations that he forgave them and died happy.

At that moment an angel came by in the disguise of a small boy(and I cannot think of any more effective disguise an angel couldhave assumed), with a can of beer in one hand, and in the othersomething at the end of a string, which he let down on to everyflat stone he came across, and then pulled up again, thisproducing a peculiarly unattractive sound, suggestive ofsuffering.

We asked this heavenly messenger (as we discovered himafterwards to be) if he knew of any lonely house, whose occupantswere few and feeble (old ladies or paralysed gentlemenpreferred), who could be easily frightened into giving up theirbeds for the night to three desperate men; or, if not this, couldhe recommend us to an empty pigstye, or a disused limekiln, oranything of that sort. He did not know of any suchplace—at least, not one handy; but he said that, if weliked to come with him, his mother had a room to spare, and couldput us up for the night.

We fell upon his neck there in the moonlight and blessed him,and it would have made a very beautiful picture if the boyhimself had not been so over-powered by our emotion as to beunable to sustain himself under it, and sunk to the ground,letting us all down on top of him. Harris was so overcomewith joy that he fainted, and had to seize the boy’sbeer-can and half empty it before he could recover consciousness,and then he started off at a run, and left George and me to bringon the luggage.

It was a little four-roomed cottage where the boy lived, andhis mother—good soul!—gave us hot bacon for supper,and we ate it all—five pounds—and a jam tartafterwards, and two pots of tea, and then we went to bed.There were two beds in the room; one was a 2ft. 6in. truckle bed,and George and I slept in that, and kept in by tying ourselvestogether with a sheet; and the other was the little boy’sbed, and Harris had that all to himself, and we found him, in themorning, with two feet of bare leg sticking out at the bottom,and George and I used it to hang the towels on while webathed.

We were not so uppish about what sort of hotel we would have,next time we went to Datchet.

To return to our present trip: nothing exciting happened, andwe tugged steadily on to a little below Monkey Island, where wedrew up and lunched. We tackled the cold beef for lunch,and then we found that we had forgotten to bring anymustard. I don’t think I ever in my life, before orsince, felt I wanted mustard as badly as I felt I wanted itthen. I don’t care for mustard as a rule, and it isvery seldom that I take it at all, but I would have given worldsfor it then.

I don’t know how many worlds there may be in theuniverse, but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard atthat precise moment could have had them all. I growreckless like that when I want a thing and can’t getit.

Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too.It would have been a good thing for anybody who had come up tothat spot with a can of mustard, then: he would have been set upin worlds for the rest of his life.

But there! I daresay both Harris and I would have triedto back out of the bargain after we had got the mustard.One makes these extravagant offers in moments of excitement, but,of course, when one comes to think of it, one sees how absurdlyout of proportion they are with the value of the requiredarticle. I heard a man, going up a mountain in Switzerland,once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer, and, when hecame to a little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up a mostfearful row because they charged him five francs for a bottle ofBass. He said it was a scandalous imposition, and he wroteto the Times about it.

It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard.We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow anduninteresting. We thought of the happy days of childhood,and sighed. We brightened up a bit, however, over theapple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pine-apple fromthe bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of theboat, we felt that life was worth living after all.

We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. Welooked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice.We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.

Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. Weturned out everything in the hamper. We turned out thebags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of theboat. We took everything out on to the bank and shookit. There was no tin-opener to be found.

Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, andbroke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair ofscissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eyeout. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to makea hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and thehitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bankinto two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured,and broke a teacup.

Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank,and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and Iwent back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George heldthe tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against thetop of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air,and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.

It was George’s straw hat that saved his life thatday. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of awinter’s evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys aretelling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through,George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring taleis told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.

Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it withthe mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harristook it in hand.

We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered itinto every form known to geometry—but we could not make ahole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into ashape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wildhideousness, that he got frightened and threw away themast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass andlooked at it.

There was one great dent across the top that had theappearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so thatHarris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it farinto the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our cursesat it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, andnever paused till we reached Maidenhead.

Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It isthe haunt of the river swell and his overdressed femalecompanion. It is the town of showy hotels, patronisedchiefly by dudes and ballet girls. It is the witch’skitchen from which go forth those demons of theriver—steam-launches. The London Journal dukealways has his “little place” at Maidenhead; and theheroine of the three-volume novel always dines there when shegoes out on the spree with somebody else’s husband.

We went through Maidenhead quickly, and then eased up, andtook leisurely that grand reach beyond Boulter’s andCookham locks. Clieveden Woods still wore their daintydress of spring, and rose up, from the water’s edge, in onelong harmony of blended shades of fairy green. In itsunbroken loveliness this is, perhaps, the sweetest stretch of allthe river, and lingeringly we slowly drew our little boat awayfrom its deep peace.

We pulled up in the backwater, just below Cookham, and hadtea; and, when we were through the lock, it was evening. Astiffish breeze had sprung up—in our favour, for a wonder;for, as a rule on the river, the wind is always dead against youwhatever way you go. It is against you in the morning, whenyou start for a day’s trip, and you pull a long distance,thinking how easy it will be to come back with the sail.Then, after tea, the wind veers round, and you have to pull hardin its teeth all the way home.

When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind isconsistently in your favour both ways. But there! thisworld is only a probation, and man was born to trouble as thesparks fly upward.

This evening, however, they had evidently made a mistake, andhad put the wind round at our back instead of in our face.We kept very quiet about it, and got the sail up quickly beforethey found it out, and then we spread ourselves about the boat inthoughtful attitudes, and the sail bellied out, and strained, andgrumbled at the mast, and the boat flew.

I steered.

There is no more thrilling sensation I know of thansailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got toyet—except in dreams. The wings of the rushing windseem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You areno longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creepingtortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Yourheart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms areround you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit isat one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of theair are singing to you. The earth seems far away andlittle; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers,and you stretch your arms to them.

We had the river to ourselves, except that, far in thedistance, we could see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream, onwhich three fishermen sat; and we skimmed over the water, andpassed the wooded banks, and no one spoke.

I was steering.

As we drew nearer, we could see that the three men fishingseemed old and solemn-looking men. They sat on three chairsin the punt, and watched intently their lines. And the redsunset threw a mystic light upon the waters, and tinged with firethe towering woods, and made a golden glory of the piled-upclouds. It was an hour of deep enchantment, of ecstatichope and longing. The little sail stood out against thepurple sky, the gloaming lay around us, wrapping the world inrainbow shadows; and, behind us, crept the night.

We seemed like knights of some old legend, sailing across somemystic lake into the unknown realm of twilight, unto the greatland of the sunset.

We did not go into the realm of twilight; we went slap intothat punt, where those three old men were fishing. We didnot know what had happened at first, because the sail shut outthe view, but from the nature of the language that rose up uponthe evening air, we gathered that we had come into theneighbourhood of human beings, and that they were vexed anddiscontented.

Harris let the sail down, and then we saw what hadhappened. We had knocked those three old gentlemen offtheir chairs into a general heap at the bottom of the boat, andthey were now slowly and painfully sorting themselves out fromeach other, and picking fish off themselves; and as they worked,they cursed us—not with a common cursory curse, but withlong, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embracedthe whole of our career, and went away into the distant future,and included all our relations, and covered everything connectedwith us—good, substantial curses.

Harris told them they ought to be grateful for a littleexcitement, sitting there fishing all day, and he also said thathe was shocked and grieved to hear men their age give way totemper so.

But it did not do any good.

George said he would steer, after that. He said a mindlike mine ought not to be expected to give itself away insteering boats—better let a mere commonplace human beingsee after that boat, before we jolly well all got drowned; and hetook the lines, and brought us up to Marlow.

And at Marlow we left the boat by the bridge, and went and putup for the night at the “Crown.”

CHAPTER XIII.

Marlow.—Bisham Abbey.—TheMedmenham Monks.—Montmorency thinks he will murder an oldTom cat.—But eventually decides that he will let itlive.—Shameful conduct of a fox terrier at the CivilService Stores.—Our departure from Marlow.—Animposing procession.—The steam launch, useful receipts forannoying and hindering it.—We decline to drink theriver.—A peaceful dog.—Strange disappearance ofHarris and a pie.

Marlow is one of the pleasantest river centres I knowof. It is a bustling, lively little town; not verypicturesque on the whole, it is true, but there are many quaintnooks and corners to be found in it, nevertheless—standingarches in the shattered bridge of Time, over which our fancytravels back to the days when Marlow Manor owned Saxon Algar forits lord, ere conquering William seized it to give to QueenMatilda, ere it passed to the Earls of Warwick or to worldly-wiseLord Paget, the councillor of four successive sovereigns.

There is lovely country round about it, too, if, afterboating, you are fond of a walk, while the river itself is at itsbest here. Down to Cookham, past the Quarry Woods and themeadows, is a lovely reach. Dear old Quarry Woods! withyour narrow, climbing paths, and little winding glades, howscented to this hour you seem with memories of sunny summerdays! How haunted are your shadowy vistas with the ghostsof laughing faces! how from your whispering leaves there softlyfall the voices of long ago!

From Marlow up to Sonning is even fairer yet. Grand oldBisham Abbey, whose stone walls have rung to the shouts of theKnights Templars, and which, at one time, was the home of Anne ofCleves and at another of Queen Elizabeth, is passed on the rightbank just half a mile above Marlow Bridge. Bisham Abbey isrich in melodramatic properties. It contains a tapestrybed-chamber, and a secret room hid high up in the thickwalls. The ghost of the Lady Holy, who beat her little boyto death, still walks there at night, trying to wash its ghostlyhands clean in a ghostly basin.

Warwick, the king-maker, rests there, careless now about suchtrivial things as earthly kings and earthly kingdoms; andSalisbury, who did good service at Poitiers. Just beforeyou come to the abbey, and right on the river’s bank, isBisham Church, and, perhaps, if any tombs are worth inspecting,they are the tombs and monuments in Bisham Church. It waswhile floating in his boat under the Bisham beeches that Shelley,who was then living at Marlow (you can see his house now, in Weststreet), composed The Revolt of Islam.

By Hurley Weir, a little higher up, I have often thought thatI could stay a month without having sufficient time to drink inall the beauty of the scene. The village of Hurley, fiveminutes’ walk from the lock, is as old a little spot asthere is on the river, dating, as it does, to quote the quaintphraseology of those dim days, “from the times of KingSebert and King Offa.” Just past the weir (going up)is Danes’ Field, where the invading Danes once encamped,during their march to Gloucestershire; and a little furtherstill, nestling by a sweet corner of the stream, is what is leftof Medmenham Abbey.

The famous Medmenham monks, or “Hell Fire Club,”as they were commonly called, and of whom the notorious Wilkeswas a member, were a fraternity whose motto was “Do as youplease,” and that invitation still stands over the ruineddoorway of the abbey. Many years before this bogus abbey,with its congregation of irreverent jesters, was founded, therestood upon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind, whosemonks were of a somewhat different type to the revellers thatwere to follow them, five hundred years afterwards.

The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood there in thethirteenth century, wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls,and ate no flesh, nor fish, nor eggs. They lay upon straw,and they rose at midnight to mass. They spent the day inlabour, reading, and prayer; and over all their lives there fella silence as of death, for no one spoke.

A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, thatGod had made so bright! Strange that Nature’s voicesall around them—the soft singing of the waters, thewhisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushingwind—should not have taught them a truer meaning of lifethan this. They listened there, through the long days, insilence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long andthrough the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, andthey heard it not.

From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock the river is full ofpeaceful beauty, but, after it passes Greenlands, the ratheruninteresting looking river residence of my newsagent—aquiet unassuming old gentleman, who may often be met with aboutthese regions, during the summer months, sculling himself alongin easy vigorous style, or chatting genially to some oldlock-keeper, as he passes through—until well the other sideof Henley, it is somewhat bare and dull.

We got up tolerably early on the Monday morning at Marlow, andwent for a bathe before breakfast; and, coming back, Montmorencymade an awful ass of himself. The only subject on whichMontmorency and I have any serious difference of opinion iscats. I like cats; Montmorency does not.

When I meet a cat, I say, “Poor puss*!” and stopdown and tickle the side of its head; and the cat sticks up itstail in a rigid, cast-iron manner, arches its back, and wipes itsnose up against my trousers; and all is gentleness andpeace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the whole street knowsabout it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten secondsto last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, withcare.

I do not blame the dog (contenting myself, as a rule, withmerely clouting his head or throwing stones at him), because Itake it that it is his nature. Fox-terriers are born withabout four times as much original sin in them as other dogs are,and it will take years and years of patient effort on the part ofus Christians to bring about any appreciable reformation in therowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.

I remember being in the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one day,and all round about me were dogs, waiting for the return of theirowners, who were shopping inside. There were a mastiff, andone or two collies, and a St. Bernard, a few retrievers andNewfoundlands, a boar-hound, a French poodle, with plenty of hairround its head, but mangy about the middle; a bull-dog, a fewLowther Arcade sort of animals, about the size of rats, and acouple of Yorkshire tykes.

There they sat, patient, good, and thoughtful. A solemnpeacefulness seemed to reign in that lobby. An air ofcalmness and resignation—of gentle sadness pervaded theroom.

Then a sweet young lady entered, leading a meek-looking littlefox-terrier, and left him, chained up there, between the bull-dogand the poodle. He sat and looked about him for aminute. Then he cast up his eyes to the ceiling, andseemed, judging from his expression, to be thinking of hismother. Then he yawned. Then he looked round at theother dogs, all silent, grave, and dignified.

He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping dreamlessly on hisright. He looked at the poodle, erect and haughty, on hisleft. Then, without a word of warning, without the shadowof a provocation, he bit that poodle’s near fore-leg, and ayelp of agony rang through the quiet shades of that lobby.

The result of his first experiment seemed highly satisfactoryto him, and he determined to go on and make things lively allround. He sprang over the poodle and vigorously attacked acollie, and the collie woke up, and immediately commenced afierce and noisy contest with the poodle. Then Foxey cameback to his own place, and caught the bull-dog by the ear, andtried to throw him away; and the bull-dog, a curiously impartialanimal, went for everything he could reach, including thehall-porter, which gave that dear little terrier the opportunityto enjoy an uninterrupted fight of his own with an equallywilling Yorkshire tyke.

Anyone who knows canine nature need hardly, be told that, bythis time, all the other dogs in the place were fighting as iftheir hearths and homes depended on the fray. The big dogsfought each other indiscriminately; and the little dogs foughtamong themselves, and filled up their spare time by biting thelegs of the big dogs.

The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium, and the din wasterrific. A crowd assembled outside in the Haymarket, andasked if it was a vestry meeting; or, if not, who was beingmurdered, and why? Men came with poles and ropes, and triedto separate the dogs, and the police were sent for.

And in the midst of the riot that sweet young lady returned,and snatched up that sweet little dog of hers (he had laid thetyke up for a month, and had on the expression, now, of anew-born lamb) into her arms, and kissed him, and asked him if hewas killed, and what those great nasty brutes of dogs had beendoing to him; and he nestled up against her, and gazed up intoher face with a look that seemed to say: “Oh, I’m soglad you’ve come to take me away from this disgracefulscene!”

She said that the people at the Stores had no right to allowgreat savage things like those other dogs to be put withrespectable people’s dogs, and that she had a great mind tosummon somebody.

Such is the nature of fox-terriers; and, therefore, I do notblame Montmorency for his tendency to row with cats; but hewished he had not given way to it that morning.

We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way upthe High Street a cat darted out from one of the houses in frontof us, and began to trot across the road. Montmorency gavea cry of joy—the cry of a stern warrior who sees his enemygiven over to his hands—the sort of cry Cromwell might haveuttered when the Scots came down the hill—and flew afterhis prey.

His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a largercat, nor a more disreputable-looking cat. It had lost halfits tail, one of its ears, and a fairly appreciable proportion ofits nose. It was a long, sinewy-looking animal. Ithad a calm, contented air about it.

Montmorency went for that poor cat at the rate of twenty milesan hour; but the cat did not hurry up—did not seem to havegrasped the idea that its life was in danger. It trottedquietly on until its would-be assassin was within a yard of it,and then it turned round and sat down in the middle of the road,and looked at Montmorency with a gentle, inquiring expression,that said:

“Yes! You want me?”

Montmorency does not lack pluck; but there was something aboutthe look of that cat that might have chilled the heart of theboldest dog. He stopped abruptly, and looked back atTom.

Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine wasclearly as follows:—

The Cat: “Can I do anythingfor you?”

Montmorency: “No—no,thanks.”

The Cat: “Don’t youmind speaking, if you really want anything, you know.”

Montmorency (backing down theHigh Street): “Oh, no—not atall—certainly—don’t you trouble.I—I am afraid I’ve made a mistake. I thought Iknew you. Sorry I disturbed you.”

The Cat: “Not atall—quite a pleasure. Sure you don’t wantanything, now?”

Montmorency (still backing):“Not at all, thanks—not at all—very kind ofyou. Good morning.”

The Cat:“Good-morning.”

Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency,fitting what he calls his tail carefully into its groove, cameback to us, and took up an unimportant position in the rear.

To this day, if you say the word “Cats!” toMontmorency, he will visibly shrink and look up piteously at you,as if to say:

“Please don’t.”

We did our marketing after breakfast, and revictualled theboat for three days. George said we ought to takevegetables—that it was unhealthy not to eatvegetables. He said they were easy enough to cook, and thathe would see to that; so we got ten pounds of potatoes, a bushelof peas, and a few cabbages. We got a beefsteak pie, acouple of gooseberry tarts, and a leg of mutton from the hotel;and fruit, and cakes, and bread and butter, and jam, and baconand eggs, and other things we foraged round about the townfor.

Our departure from Marlow I regard as one of our greatestsuccesses. It was dignified and impressive, without beingostentatious. We had insisted at all the shops we had beento that the things should be sent with us then and there.None of your “Yes, sir, I will send them off at once: theboy will be down there before you are, sir!” and thenfooling about on the landing-stage, and going back to the shoptwice to have a row about them, for us. We waited while thebasket was packed, and took the boy with us.

We went to a good many shops, adopting this principle at eachone; and the consequence was that, by the time we had finished,we had as fine a collection of boys with baskets following usaround as heart could desire; and our final march down the middleof the High Street, to the river, must have been as imposing aspectacle as Marlow had seen for many a long day.

The order of the procession was as follows:—

Montmorency, carrying a stick.
Two disreputable-looking curs, friends of Montmorency’s.
George, carrying coats and rugs, and smoking a short pipe.
Harris, trying to walk with easy grace,
while carrying a bulged-out Gladstone bag in one hand
and a bottle of lime-juice in the other.
Greengrocer’s boy and baker’s boy,
with baskets.
Boots from the hotel, carrying hamper.
Confectioner’s boy, with basket.
Grocer’s boy, with basket.
Long-haired dog.
Cheesemonger’s boy, with basket.
Odd man carrying a bag.
Bosom companion of odd man, with his hands in his pockets,
smoking a short clay.
Fruiterer’s boy, with basket.
Myself, carrying three hats and a pair of boots,
and trying to look as if I didn’t know it.
Six small boys, and four stray dogs.

When we got down to the landing-stage, the boatman said:

“Let me see, sir; was yours a steam-launch or ahouse-boat?”

On our informing him it was a double-sculling skiff, heseemed surprised.

We had a good deal of trouble with steam launches thatmorning. It was just before the Henley week, and they weregoing up in large numbers; some by themselves, some towinghouseboats. I do hate steam launches: I suppose everyrowing man does. I never see a steam launch but I feel Ishould like to lure it to a lonely part of the river, and there,in the silence and the solitude, strangle it.

There is a blatant bumptiousness about a steam launch that hasthe knack of rousing every evil instinct in my nature, and Iyearn for the good old days, when you could go about and tellpeople what you thought of them with a hatchet and a bow andarrows. The expression on the face of the man who, with hishands in his pockets, stands by the stern, smoking a cigar, issufficient to excuse a breach of the peace by itself; and thelordly whistle for you to get out of the way would, I amconfident, ensure a verdict of “justifiable homicide”from any jury of river men.

They used to have to whistle for us to get out of theirway. If I may do so, without appearing boastful, I think Ican honestly say that our one small boat, during that week,caused more annoyance and delay and aggravation to the steamlaunches that we came across than all the other craft on theriver put together.

“Steam launch, coming!” one of us would cry out,on sighting the enemy in the distance; and, in an instant,everything was got ready to receive her. I would take thelines, and Harris and George would sit down beside me, all of uswith our backs to the launch, and the boat would drift outquietly into mid-stream.

On would come the launch, whistling, and on we would go,drifting. At about a hundred yards off, she would startwhistling like mad, and the people would come and lean over theside, and roar at us; but we never heard them! Harris wouldbe telling us an anecdote about his mother, and George and Iwould not have missed a word of it for worlds.

Then that launch would give one final shriek of a whistle thatwould nearly burst the boiler, and she would reverse her engines,and blow off steam, and swing round and get aground; everyone onboard of it would rush to the bow and yell at us, and the peopleon the bank would stand and shout to us, and all the otherpassing boats would stop and join in, till the whole river formiles up and down was in a state of frantic commotion. Andthen Harris would break off in the most interesting part of hisnarrative, and look up with mild surprise, and say to George:

“Why, George, bless me, if here isn’t a steamlaunch!”

And George would answer:

“Well, do you know, I thought I heardsomething!”

Upon which we would get nervous and confused, and not know howto get the boat out of the way, and the people in the launchwould crowd round and instruct us:

“Pull your right—you, you idiot! back with yourleft. No, not you—the other one—leavethe lines alone, can’t you—now, both together.NOT that way. Oh, you—!”

Then they would lower a boat and come to our assistance; and,after quarter of an hour’s effort, would get us clean outof their way, so that they could go on; and we would thank themso much, and ask them to give us a tow. But they neverwould.

Another good way we discovered of irritating the aristocratictype of steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, andask them if they were Messrs. Cubit’s lot or the BermondseyGood Templars, and could they lend us a saucepan.

Old ladies, not accustomed to the river, are always intenselynervous of steam launches. I remember going up once fromStaines to Windsor—a stretch of water peculiarly rich inthese mechanical monstrosities—with a party containingthree ladies of this description. It was veryexciting. At the first glimpse of every steam launch thatcame in view, they insisted on landing and sitting down on thebank until it was out of sight again. They said they werevery sorry, but that they owed it to their families not to befool-hardy.

We found ourselves short of water at Hambledon Lock; so wetook our jar and went up to the lock-keeper’s house to begfor some.

George was our spokesman. He put on a winning smile, andsaid:

“Oh, please could you spare us a littlewater?”

“Certainly,” replied the old gentleman;“take as much as you want, and leave the rest.”

“Thank you so much,” murmured George, lookingabout him. “Where—where do you keepit?”

“It’s always in the same place my boy,” wasthe stolid reply: “just behind you.”

“I don’t see it,” said George, turninground.

“Why, bless us, where’s your eyes?” was theman’s comment, as he twisted George round and pointed upand down the stream. “There’s enough of it tosee, ain’t there?”

“Oh!” exclaimed George, grasping the idea;“but we can’t drink the river, you know!”

“No; but you can drink some of it,” repliedthe old fellow. “It’s what I’vedrunk for the last fifteen years.”

George told him that his appearance, after the course, did notseem a sufficiently good advertisem*nt for the brand; and that hewould prefer it out of a pump.

We got some from a cottage a little higher up. I daresaythat was only river water, if we had known. But wedid not know, so it was all right. What the eye does notsee, the stomach does not get upset over.

We tried river water once, later on in the season, but it wasnot a success. We were coming down stream, and had pulledup to have tea in a backwater near Windsor. Our jar wasempty, and it was a case of going without our tea or taking waterfrom the river. Harris was for chancing it. He saidit must be all right if we boiled the water. He said thatthe various germs of poison present in the water would be killedby the boiling. So we filled our kettle with Thamesbackwater, and boiled it; and very careful we were to see that itdid boil.

We had made the tea, and were just settling down comfortablyto drink it, when George, with his cup half-way to his lips,paused and exclaimed:

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?” asked Harris and I.

“Why that!” said George, looking westward.

Harris and I followed his gaze, and saw, coming down towardsus on the sluggish current, a dog. It was one of thequietest and peacefullest dogs I have ever seen. I nevermet a dog who seemed more contented—more easy in itsmind. It was floating dreamily on its back, with its fourlegs stuck up straight into the air. It was what I shouldcall a full-bodied dog, with a well-developed chest. On hecame, serene, dignified, and calm, until he was abreast of ourboat, and there, among the rushes, he eased up, and settled downcosily for the evening.

George said he didn’t want any tea, and emptied his cupinto the water. Harris did not feel thirsty, either, andfollowed suit. I had drunk half mine, but I wished I hadnot.

I asked George if he thought I was likely to have typhoid.

He said: “Oh, no;” he thought I had a very goodchance indeed of escaping it. Anyhow, I should know inabout a fortnight, whether I had or had not.

We went up the backwater to Wargrave. It is a short cut,leading out of the right-hand bank about half a mile above MarshLock, and is well worth taking, being a pretty, shady littlepiece of stream, besides saving nearly half a mile ofdistance.

Of course, its entrance is studded with posts and chains, andsurrounded with notice boards, menacing all kinds of torture,imprisonment, and death to everyone who dares set scull upon itswaters—I wonder some of these riparian boors don’tclaim the air of the river and threaten everyone with fortyshillings fine who breathes it—but the posts and chains alittle skill will easily avoid; and as for the boards, you might,if you have five minutes to spare, and there is nobody about,take one or two of them down and throw them into the river.

Half-way up the backwater, we got out and lunched; and it wasduring this lunch that George and I received rather a tryingshock.

Harris received a shock, too; but I do not thinkHarris’s shock could have been anything like so bad as theshock that George and I had over the business.

You see, it was in this way: we were sitting in a meadow,about ten yards from the water’s edge, and we had justsettled down comfortably to feed. Harris had the beefsteakpie between his knees, and was carving it, and George and I werewaiting with our plates ready.

“Have you got a spoon there?” says Harris;“I want a spoon to help the gravy with.”

The hamper was close behind us, and George and I both turnedround to reach one out. We were not five seconds gettingit. When we looked round again, Harris and the pie weregone!

It was a wide, open field. There was not a tree or a bitof hedge for hundreds of yards. He could not have tumbledinto the river, because we were on the water side of him, and hewould have had to climb over us to do it.

George and I gazed all about. Then we gazed at eachother.

“Has he been snatched up to heaven?” Iqueried.

“They’d hardly have taken the pie too,” saidGeorge.

There seemed weight in this objection, and we discarded theheavenly theory.

“I suppose the truth of the matter is,” suggestedGeorge, descending to the commonplace and practicable,“that there has been an earthquake.”

And then he added, with a touch of sadness in his voice:“I wish he hadn’t been carving that pie.”

With a sigh, we turned our eyes once more towards the spotwhere Harris and the pie had last been seen on earth; and there,as our blood froze in our veins and our hair stood up on end, wesaw Harris’s head—and nothing but hishead—sticking bolt upright among the tall grass, the facevery red, and bearing upon it an expression of greatindignation!

George was the first to recover.

“Speak!” he cried, “and tell us whether youare alive or dead—and where is the rest of you?”

“Oh, don’t be a stupid ass!” saidHarris’s head. “I believe you did it onpurpose.”

“Did what?” exclaimed George and I.

“Why, put me to sit here—darn silly trick!Here, catch hold of the pie.”

And out of the middle of the earth, as it seemed to us, rosethe pie—very much mixed up and damaged; and, after it,scrambled Harris—tumbled, grubby, and wet.

He had been sitting, without knowing it, on the very verge ofa small gully, the long grass hiding it from view; and in leaninga little back he had shot over, pie and all.

He said he had never felt so surprised in all his life, aswhen he first felt himself going, without being able toconjecture in the slightest what had happened. He thoughtat first that the end of the world had come.

Harris believes to this day that George and I planned it allbeforehand. Thus does unjust suspicion follow even the mostblameless for, as the poet says, “Who shall escapecalumny?”

Who, indeed!

CHAPTER XIV.

Wargrave.—Waxworks.—Sonning.—Ourstew.—Montmorency is sarcastic.—Fight betweenMontmorency and the tea-kettle.—George’s banjostudies.—Meet with discouragement.—Difficulties inthe way of the musical amateur.—Learning to play thebagpipes.—Harris feels sad after supper.—George and Igo for a walk.—Return hungry and wet.—There is astrangeness about Harris.—Harris and the swans, aremarkable story.—Harris has a troubled night.

We caught a breeze, after lunch, which took us gently up pastWargrave and Shiplake. Mellowed in the drowsy sunlight of asummer’s afternoon, Wargrave, nestling where the riverbends, makes a sweet old picture as you pass it, and one thatlingers long upon the retina of memory.

The “George and Dragon” at Wargrave boasts a sign,painted on the one side by Leslie, R.A., and on the other byHodgson of that ilk. Leslie has depicted the fight; Hodgsonhas imagined the scene, “After theFight”—George, the work done, enjoying his pint ofbeer.

Day, the author of Sandford and Merton, livedand—more credit to the place still—was killed atWargrave. In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill,who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter, betweentwo boys and two girls who “have never been undutiful totheir parents; who have never been known to swear or to telluntruths, to steal, or to break windows.” Fancygiving up all that for five shillings a year! It is notworth it.

It is rumoured in the town that once, many years ago, a boyappeared who really never had done these things—or at allevents, which was all that was required or could be expected, hadnever been known to do them—and thus won the crown ofglory. He was exhibited for three weeks afterwards in theTown Hall, under a glass case.

What has become of the money since no one knows. Theysay it is always handed over to the nearest wax-works show.

Shiplake is a pretty village, but it cannot be seen from theriver, being upon the hill. Tennyson was married inShiplake Church.

The river up to Sonning winds in and out through many islands,and is very placid, hushed, and lonely. Few folk, except attwilight, a pair or two of rustic lovers, walk along itsbanks. ’Arry and Lord Fitznoodle have been leftbehind at Henley, and dismal, dirty Reading is not yetreached. It is a part of the river in which to dream ofbygone days, and vanished forms and faces, and things that mighthave been, but are not, confound them.

We got out at Sonning, and went for a walk round thevillage. It is the most fairy-like little nook on the wholeriver. It is more like a stage village than one built ofbricks and mortar. Every house is smothered in roses, andnow, in early June, they were bursting forth in clouds of daintysplendour. If you stop at Sonning, put up at the“Bull,” behind the church. It is a veritablepicture of an old country inn, with green, square courtyard infront, where, on seats beneath the trees, the old men group of anevening to drink their ale and gossip over village politics; withlow, quaint rooms and latticed windows, and awkward stairs andwinding passages.

We roamed about sweet Sonning for an hour or so, and then, itbeing too late to push on past Reading, we decided to go back toone of the Shiplake islands, and put up there for thenight. It was still early when we got settled, and Georgesaid that, as we had plenty of time, it would be a splendidopportunity to try a good, slap-up supper. He said he wouldshow us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking,and suggested that, with the vegetables and the remains of thecold beef and general odds and ends, we should make an Irishstew.

It seemed a fascinating idea. George gathered wood andmade a fire, and Harris and I started to peel the potatoes.I should never have thought that peeling potatoes was such anundertaking. The job turned out to be the biggest thing ofits kind that I had ever been in. We began cheerfully, onemight almost say skittishly, but our light-heartedness was goneby the time the first potato was finished. The more wepeeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time wehad got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was nopotato left—at least none worth speaking of. Georgecame and had a look at it—it was about the size of apea-nut. He said:

“Oh, that won’t do! You’re wastingthem. You must scrape them.”

So we scraped them, and that was harder work thanpeeling. They are such an extraordinary shape,potatoes—all bumps and warts and hollows. We workedsteadily for five-and-twenty minutes, and did fourpotatoes. Then we struck. We said we should requirethe rest of the evening for scraping ourselves.

I never saw such a thing as potato-scraping for making afellow in a mess. It seemed difficult to believe that thepotato-scrapings in which Harris and I stood, half smothered,could have come off four potatoes. It shows you what can bedone with economy and care.

George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in anIrish stew, so we washed half-a-dozen or so more, and put them inwithout peeling. We also put in a cabbage and about half apeck of peas. George stirred it all up, and then he saidthat there seemed to be a lot of room to spare, so we overhauledboth the hampers, and picked out all the odds and ends and theremnants, and added them to the stew. There were half apork pie and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put themin. Then George found half a tin of potted salmon, and heemptied that into the pot.

He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid ofsuch a lot of things. I fished out a couple of eggs thathad got cracked, and put those in. George said they wouldthicken the gravy.

I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted;and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who hadevinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolledaway with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a fewminutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which heevidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner;whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire toassist, I cannot say.

We had a discussion as to whether the rat should go in ornot. Harris said that he thought it would be all right,mixed up with the other things, and that every little helped; butGeorge stood up for precedent. He said he had never heardof water-rats in Irish stew, and he would rather be on the safeside, and not try experiments.

Harris said:

“If you never try a new thing, how can you tell whatit’s like? It’s men such as you that hamper theworld’s progress. Think of the man who first triedGerman sausage!”

It was a great success, that Irish stew. I don’tthink I ever enjoyed a meal more. There was something sofresh and piquant about it. One’s palate gets sotired of the old hackneyed things: here was a dish with a newflavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.

And it was nourishing, too. As George said, there wasgood stuff in it. The peas and potatoes might have been abit softer, but we all had good teeth, so that did not mattermuch: and as for the gravy, it was a poem—a little toorich, perhaps, for a weak stomach, but nutritious.

We finished up with tea and cherry tart. Montmorency hada fight with the kettle during tea-time, and came off a poorsecond.

Throughout the trip, he had manifested great curiosityconcerning the kettle. He would sit and watch it, as itboiled, with a puzzled expression, and would try and rouse itevery now and then by growling at it. When it began tosplutter and steam, he regarded it as a challenge, and would wantto fight it, only, at that precise moment, some one would alwaysdash up and bear off his prey before he could get at it.

To-day he determined he would be beforehand. At thefirst sound the kettle made, he rose, growling, and advancedtowards it in a threatening attitude. It was only a littlekettle, but it was full of pluck, and it up and spit at him.

“Ah! would ye!” growled Montmorency, showing histeeth; “I’ll teach ye to cheek a hard-working,respectable dog; ye miserable, long-nosed, dirty-lookingscoundrel, ye. Come on!”

And he rushed at that poor little kettle, and seized it by thespout.

Then, across the evening stillness, broke a blood-curdlingyelp, and Montmorency left the boat, and did a constitutionalthree times round the island at the rate of thirty-five miles anhour, stopping every now and then to bury his nose in a bit ofcool mud.

From that day Montmorency regarded the kettle with a mixtureof awe, suspicion, and hate. Whenever he saw it he wouldgrowl and back at a rapid rate, with his tail shut down, and themoment it was put upon the stove he would promptly climb out ofthe boat, and sit on the bank, till the whole tea business wasover.

George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it,but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did notfeel strong enough to stand it. George thought the musicmight do him good—said music often soothed the nerves andtook away a headache; and he twanged two or three notes, just toshow Harris what it was like.

Harris said he would rather have the headache.

George has never learned to play the banjo to this day.He has had too much all-round discouragement to meet. Hetried on two or three evenings, while we were up the river, toget a little practice, but it was never a success.Harris’s language used to be enough to unnerve any man;added to which, Montmorency would sit and howl steadily, rightthrough the performance. It was not giving the man a fairchance.

“What’s he want to howl like that for whenI’m playing?” George would exclaim indignantly, whiletaking aim at him with a boot.

“What do you want to play like that for when he ishowling?” Harris would retort, catching the boot.“You let him alone. He can’t helphowling. He’s got a musical ear, and your playingmakes him howl.”

So George determined to postpone study of the banjo until hereached home. But he did not get much opportunity eventhere. Mrs. P. used to come up and say she was verysorry—for herself, she liked to hear him—but the ladyupstairs was in a very delicate state, and the doctor was afraidit might injure the child.

Then George tried taking it out with him late at night, andpractising round the square. But the inhabitants complainedto the police about it, and a watch was set for him one night,and he was captured. The evidence against him was veryclear, and he was bound over to keep the peace for sixmonths.

He seemed to lose heart in the business after that. Hedid make one or two feeble efforts to take up the work again whenthe six months had elapsed, but there was always the samecoldness—the same want of sympathy on the part of the worldto fight against; and, after awhile, he despaired altogether, andadvertised the instrument for sale at a greatsacrifice—“owner having no further use forsame”—and took to learning card tricks instead.

It must be disheartening work learning a musicalinstrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake,would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art ofplaying a musical instrument. But it doesn’t!

I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play thebagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of oppositionhe had to contend with. Why, not even from the members ofhis own family did he receive what you could call activeencouragement. His father was dead against the businessfrom the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on thesubject.

My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, buthe had to give that plan up, because of his sister. She wassomewhat religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such anawful thing to begin the day like that.

So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family hadgone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a badname. People, going home late, would stop outside tolisten, and then put it about all over the town, the nextmorning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr.Jefferson’s the night before; and would describe how theyhad heard the victim’s shrieks and the brutal oaths andcurses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and thelast dying gurgle of the corpse.

So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchenwith all the doors shut; but his more successful passages couldgenerally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of theseprecautions, and would affect his mother almost to tears.

She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had beenswallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast ofNew Guinea—where the connection came in, she could notexplain).

Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom ofthe garden, about quarter of a mile from the house, and made himtake the machine down there when he wanted to work it; andsometimes a visitor would come to the house who knew nothing ofthe matter, and they would forget to tell him all about it, andcaution him, and he would go out for a stroll round the gardenand suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes, without beingprepared for it, or knowing what it was. If he were a manof strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mereaverage intellect it usually sent mad.

There is, it must be confessed, something very sad about theearly efforts of an amateur in bagpipes. I have felt thatmyself when listening to my young friend. They appear to bea trying instrument to perform upon. You have to get enoughbreath for the whole tune before you start—at least, so Igathered from watching Jefferson.

He would begin magnificently with a wild, full,come-to-the-battle sort of a note, that quite roused you.But he would get more and more piano as he went on, and the lastverse generally collapsed in the middle with a splutter and ahiss.

You want to be in good health to play the bagpipes.

Young Jefferson only learnt to play one tune on thosebagpipes; but I never heard any complaints about theinsufficiency of his repertoire—none whatever. Thistune was “The Campbells are Coming,Hooray—Hooray!” so he said, though his father alwaysheld that it was “The Blue Bells of Scotland.”Nobody seemed quite sure what it was exactly, but they all agreedthat it sounded Scotch.

Strangers were allowed three guesses, and most of them guesseda different tune each time.

Harris was disagreeable after supper,—I think it musthave been the stew that had upset him: he is not used to highliving,—so George and I left him in the boat, and settledto go for a mouch round Henley. He said he should have aglass of whisky and a pipe, and fix things up for thenight. We were to shout when we returned, and he would rowover from the island and fetch us.

“Don’t go to sleep, old man,” we said as westarted.

“Not much fear of that while this stew’son,” he grunted, as he pulled back to the island.

Henley was getting ready for the regatta, and was full ofbustle. We met a goodish number of men we knew about thetown, and in their pleasant company the time slipped by somewhatquickly; so that it was nearly eleven o’clock before we setoff on our four-mile walk home—as we had learned to callour little craft by this time.

It was a dismal night, coldish, with a thin rain falling; andas we trudged through the dark, silent fields, talking low toeach other, and wondering if we were going right or not, wethought of the cosy boat, with the bright light streaming throughthe tight-drawn canvas; of Harris and Montmorency, and thewhisky, and wished that we were there.

We conjured up the picture of ourselves inside, tired and alittle hungry; of the gloomy river and the shapeless trees; and,like a giant glow-worm underneath them, our dear old boat, sosnug and warm and cheerful. We could see ourselves atsupper there, pecking away at cold meat, and passing each otherchunks of bread; we could hear the cheery clatter of our knives,the laughing voices, filling all the space, and overflowingthrough the opening out into the night. And we hurried onto realise the vision.

We struck the tow-path at length, and that made us happy;because prior to this we had not been sure whether we werewalking towards the river or away from it, and when you are tiredand want to go to bed uncertainties like that worry you. Wepassed Skiplake as the clock was striking the quarter to twelve;and then George said, thoughtfully:

“You don’t happen to remember which of the islandsit was, do you?”

“No,” I replied, beginning to grow thoughtful too,“I don’t. How many are there?”

“Only four,” answered George. “It willbe all right, if he’s awake.”

“And if not?” I queried; but we dismissed thattrain of thought.

We shouted when we came opposite the first island, but therewas no response; so we went to the second, and tried there, andobtained the same result.

“Oh! I remember now,” said George; “itwas the third one.”

And we ran on hopefully to the third one, and hallooed.

No answer!

The case was becoming serious. it was now past midnight.The hotels at Skiplake and Henley would be crammed; and we couldnot go round, knocking up cottagers and householders in themiddle of the night, to know if they let apartments! Georgesuggested walking back to Henley and assaulting a policeman, andso getting a night’s lodging in the station-house.But then there was the thought, “Suppose he only hits usback and refuses to lock us up!”

We could not pass the whole night fighting policemen.Besides, we did not want to overdo the thing and get sixmonths.

We despairingly tried what seemed in the darkness to be thefourth island, but met with no better success. The rain wascoming down fast now, and evidently meant to last. We werewet to the skin, and cold and miserable. We began to wonderwhether there were only four islands or more, or whether we werenear the islands at all, or whether we were anywhere within amile of where we ought to be, or in the wrong part of the riveraltogether; everything looked so strange and different in thedarkness. We began to understand the sufferings of theBabes in the Wood.

Just when we had given up all hope—yes, I know that isalways the time that things do happen in novels and tales; but Ican’t help it. I resolved, when I began to write thisbook, that I would be strictly truthful in all things; and so Iwill be, even if I have to employ hackneyed phrases for thepurpose.

It was just when we had given up all hope, and I musttherefore say so. Just when we had given up all hope, then,I suddenly caught sight, a little way below us, of a strange,weird sort of glimmer flickering among the trees on the oppositebank. For an instant I thought of ghosts: it was such ashadowy, mysterious light. The next moment it flashedacross me that it was our boat, and I sent up such a yell acrossthe water that made the night seem to shake in its bed.

We waited breathless for a minute, and then—oh! divinestmusic of the darkness!—we heard the answering bark ofMontmorency. We shouted back loud enough to wake the SevenSleepers—I never could understand myself why it should takemore noise to wake seven sleepers than one—and, after whatseemed an hour, but what was really, I suppose, about fiveminutes, we saw the lighted boat creeping slowly over theblackness, and heard Harris’s sleepy voice asking where wewere.

There was an unaccountable strangeness about Harris. Itwas something more than mere ordinary tiredness. He pulledthe boat against a part of the bank from which it was quiteimpossible for us to get into it, and immediately went tosleep. It took us an immense amount of screaming androaring to wake him up again and put some sense into him; but wesucceeded at last, and got safely on board.

Harris had a sad expression on him, so we noticed, when we gotinto the boat. He gave you the idea of a man who had beenthrough trouble. We asked him if anything had happened, andhe said—

“Swans!”

It seemed we had moored close to a swan’s nest, and,soon after George and I had gone, the female swan came back, andkicked up a row about it. Harris had chivied her off, andshe had gone away, and fetched up her old man. Harris saidhe had had quite a fight with these two swans; but courage andskill had prevailed in the end, and he had defeated them.

Half-an-hour afterwards they returned with eighteen otherswans! It must have been a fearful battle, so far as wecould understand Harris’s account of it. The swanshad tried to drag him and Montmorency out of the boat and drownthem; and he had defended himself like a hero for four hours, andhad killed the lot, and they had all paddled away to die.

“How many swans did you say there were?” askedGeorge.

“Thirty-two,” replied Harris, sleepily.

“You said eighteen just now,” said George.

“No, I didn’t,” grunted Harris; “Isaid twelve. Think I can’t count?”

What were the real facts about these swans we never foundout. We questioned Harris on the subject in the morning,and he said, “What swans?” and seemed to think thatGeorge and I had been dreaming.

Oh, how delightful it was to be safe in the boat, after ourtrials and fears! We ate a hearty supper, George and I, andwe should have had some toddy after it, if we could have foundthe whisky, but we could not. We examined Harris as to whathe had done with it; but he did not seem to know what we meant by“whisky,” or what we were talking about at all.Montmorency looked as if he knew something, but said nothing.

I slept well that night, and should have slept better if ithad not been for Harris. I have a vague recollection ofhaving been woke up at least a dozen times during the night byHarris wandering about the boat with the lantern, looking for hisclothes. He seemed to be worrying about his clothes allnight.

Twice he routed up George and myself to see if we were lyingon his trousers. George got quite wild the second time.

“What the thunder do you want your trousers for, in themiddle of the night?” he asked indignantly.“Why don’t you lie down, and go to sleep?”

I found him in trouble, the next time I awoke, because hecould not find his socks; and my last hazy remembrance is ofbeing rolled over on my side, and of hearing Harris mutteringsomething about its being an extraordinary thing where hisumbrella could have got to.

CHAPTER XV.

Household duties.—Love ofwork.—The old river hand, what he does and what he tellsyou he has done.—Scepticism of the newgeneration.—Early boatingrecollections.—Rafting.—George does the thing instyle.—The old boatman, his method.—So calm, so fullof peace.—The beginner.—Punting.—A sadaccident.—Pleasures of friendship.—Sailing, my firstexperience.—Possible reason why we were not drowned.

We woke late the next morning, and, at Harris’s earnestdesire, partook of a plain breakfast, with “nondainties.” Then we cleaned up, and put everythingstraight (a continual labour, which was beginning to afford me apretty clear insight into a question that had often posedme—namely, how a woman with the work of only one house onher hands manages to pass away her time), and, at about ten, setout on what we had determined should be a good day’sjourney.

We agreed that we would pull this morning, as a change fromtowing; and Harris thought the best arrangement would be thatGeorge and I should scull, and he steer. I did not chime inwith this idea at all; I said I thought Harris would have beenshowing a more proper spirit if he had suggested that he andGeorge should work, and let me rest a bit. It seemed to methat I was doing more than my fair share of the work on thistrip, and I was beginning to feel strongly on the subject.

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than Ishould do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; Ilike work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it forhours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid ofit nearly breaks my heart.

You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work hasalmost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now,that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shallhave to throw out a wing soon.

And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the workthat I have by me now has been in my possession for years andyears, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take agreat pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dustit. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservationthan I do.

But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. Ido not ask for more than my proper share.

But I get it without asking for it—at least, so itappears to me—and this worries me.

George says he does not think I need trouble myself on thesubject. He thinks it is only my over-scrupulous naturethat makes me fear I am having more than my due; and that, as amatter of fact, I don’t have half as much as I ought.But I expect he only says this to comfort me.

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea ofeach member of the crew that he is doing everything.Harris’s notion was, that it was he alone who had beenworking, and that both George and I had been imposing uponhim. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea ofHarris’s having done anything more than eat and sleep, andhad a cast-iron opinion that it was he—Georgehimself—who had done all the labour worth speaking of.

He said he had never been out with such a couple of lazilyskulks as Harris and I.

That amused Harris.

“Fancy old George talking about work!” he laughed;“why, about half-an-hour of it would kill him. Haveyou ever seen George work?” he added, turning to me.

I agreed with Harris that I never had—most certainly notsince we had started on this trip.

“Well, I don’t see how you can know muchabout it, one way or the other,” George retorted on Harris;“for I’m blest if you haven’t been asleep halfthe time. Have you ever seen Harris fully awake, except atmeal-time?” asked George, addressing me.

Truth compelled me to support George. Harris had beenvery little good in the boat, so far as helping was concerned,from the beginning.

“Well, hang it all, I’ve done more than old J.,anyhow,” rejoined Harris.

“Well, you couldn’t very well have doneless,” added George.

“I suppose J. thinks he is the passenger,”continued Harris.

And that was their gratitude to me for having brought them andtheir wretched old boat all the way up from Kingston, and forhaving superintended and managed everything for them, and takencare of them, and slaved for them. It is the way of theworld.

We settled the present difficulty by arranging that Harris andGeorge should scull up past Reading, and that I should tow theboat on from there. Pulling a heavy boat against a strongstream has few attractions for me now. There was a time,long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard work: now I like togive the youngsters a chance.

I notice that most of the old river hands are similarlyretiring, whenever there is any stiff pulling to be done.You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which hestretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of theboat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes aboutthe marvellous feats he performed last season.

“Call what you’re doing hard work!” hedrawls, between his contented whiffs, addressing the twoperspiring novices, who have been grinding away steadily upstream for the last hour and a half; “why, Jim Biffles andJack and I, last season, pulled up from Marlow to Goring in oneafternoon—never stopped once. Do you remember that,Jack?”

Jack, who has made himself a bed up in the prow of all therugs and coats he can collect, and who has been lying thereasleep for the last two hours, partially wakes up on being thusappealed to, and recollects all about the matter, and alsoremembers that there was an unusually strong stream against themall the way—likewise a stiff wind.

“About thirty-four miles, I suppose, it must havebeen,” adds the first speaker, reaching down anothercushion to put under his head.

“No—no; don’t exaggerate, Tom,”murmurs Jack, reprovingly; “thirty-three at theoutside.”

And Jack and Tom, quite exhausted by this conversationaleffort, drop off to sleep once more. And the twosimple-minded youngsters at the sculls feel quite proud of beingallowed to row such wonderful oarsmen as Jack and Tom, and strainaway harder than ever.

When I was a young man, I used to listen to these tales frommy elders, and take them in, and swallow them, and digest everyword of them, and then come up for more; but the new generationdo not seem to have the simple faith of the old times.We—George, Harris, and myself—took a “raw’un” up with us once last season, and we plied himwith the customary stretchers about the wonderful things we haddone all the way up.

We gave him all the regular ones—the time-honoured liesthat have done duty up the river with every boating-man for yearspast—and added seven entirely original ones that we hadinvented for ourselves, including a really quite likely story,founded, to a certain extent, on an all but true episode, whichhad actually happened in a modified degree some years ago tofriends of ours—a story that a mere child could havebelieved without injuring itself, much.

And that young man mocked at them all, and wanted us to repeatthe feats then and there, and to bet us ten to one that wedidn’t.

We got to chatting about our rowing experiences this morning,and to recounting stories of our first efforts in the art ofoarsmanship. My own earliest boating recollection is offive of us contributing threepence each and taking out acuriously constructed craft on the Regent’s Park lake,drying ourselves subsequently, in the park-keeper’slodge.

After that, having acquired a taste for the water, I did agood deal of rafting in various suburban brickfields—anexercise providing more interest and excitement than might beimagined, especially when you are in the middle of the pond andthe proprietor of the materials of which the raft is constructedsuddenly appears on the bank, with a big stick in his hand.

Your first sensation on seeing this gentleman is that, somehowor other, you don’t feel equal to company and conversation,and that, if you could do so without appearing rude, you wouldrather avoid meeting him; and your object is, therefore, to getoff on the opposite side of the pond to which he is, and to gohome quietly and quickly, pretending not to see him. He, onthe contrary is yearning to take you by the hand, and talk toyou.

It appears that he knows your father, and is intimatelyacquainted with yourself, but this does not draw you towardshim. He says he’ll teach you to take his boards andmake a raft of them; but, seeing that you know how to do thispretty well already, the offer, though doubtless kindly meant,seems a superfluous one on his part, and you are reluctant to puthim to any trouble by accepting it.

His anxiety to meet you, however, is proof against all yourcoolness, and the energetic manner in which he dodges up and downthe pond so as to be on the spot to greet you when you land isreally quite flattering.

If he be of a stout and short-winded build, you can easilyavoid his advances; but, when he is of the youthful andlong-legged type, a meeting is inevitable. The interviewis, however, extremely brief, most of the conversation being onhis part, your remarks being mostly of an exclamatory andmono-syllabic order, and as soon as you can tear yourself awayyou do so.

I devoted some three months to rafting, and, being then asproficient as there was any need to be at that branch of the art,I determined to go in for rowing proper, and joined one of theLea boating clubs.

Being out in a boat on the river Lea, especially on Saturdayafternoons, soon makes you smart at handling a craft, and spry atescaping being run down by roughs or swamped by barges; and italso affords plenty of opportunity for acquiring the most promptand graceful method of lying down flat at the bottom of the boatso as to avoid being chucked out into the river by passingtow-lines.

But it does not give you style. It was not till I cameto the Thames that I got style. My style of rowing is verymuch admired now. People say it is so quaint.

George never went near the water until he was sixteen.Then he and eight other gentlemen of about the same age went downin a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boatthere, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, ashock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice takenout a boat on the Serpentine, told them it was jolly fun,boating!

The tide was running out pretty rapidly when they reached thelanding-stage, and there was a stiff breeze blowing across theriver, but this did not trouble them at all, and they proceededto select their boat.

There was an eight-oared racing outrigger drawn up on thestage; that was the one that took their fancy. They saidthey’d have that one, please. The boatman was away,and only his boy was in charge. The boy tried to damp theirardour for the outrigger, and showed them two or three verycomfortable-looking boats of the family-party build, but thosewould not do at all; the outrigger was the boat they thought theywould look best in.

So the boy launched it, and they took off their coats andprepared to take their seats. The boy suggested thatGeorge, who, even in those days, was always the heavy man of anyparty, should be number four. George said he should behappy to be number four, and promptly stepped into bow’splace, and sat down with his back to the stern. They gothim into his proper position at last, and then the othersfollowed.

A particularly nervous boy was appointed cox, and the steeringprinciple explained to him by Joskins. Joskins himself tookstroke. He told the others that it was simple enough; allthey had to do was to follow him.

They said they were ready, and the boy on the landing stagetook a boat-hook and shoved him off.

What then followed George is unable to describe indetail. He has a confused recollection of having,immediately on starting, received a violent blow in the small ofthe back from the butt-end of number five’s scull, at thesame time that his own seat seemed to disappear from under him bymagic, and leave him sitting on the boards. He alsonoticed, as a curious circ*mstance, that number two was at thesame instant lying on his back at the bottom of the boat, withhis legs in the air, apparently in a fit.

They passed under Kew Bridge, broadside, at the rate of eightmiles an hour. Joskins being the only one who was rowing.George, on recovering his seat, tried to help him, but, ondipping his oar into the water, it immediately, to his intensesurprise, disappeared under the boat, and nearly took him withit.

And then “cox” threw both rudder lines over-board,and burst into tears.

How they got back George never knew, but it took them justforty minutes. A dense crowd watched the entertainment fromKew Bridge with much interest, and everybody shouted out to themdifferent directions. Three times they managed to get theboat back through the arch, and three times they were carriedunder it again, and every time “cox” looked up andsaw the bridge above him he broke out into renewed sobs.

George said he little thought that afternoon that he shouldever come to really like boating.

Harris is more accustomed to sea rowing than to river work,and says that, as an exercise, he prefers it. Idon’t. I remember taking a small boat out atEastbourne last summer: I used to do a good deal of sea rowingyears ago, and I thought I should be all right; but I found I hadforgotten the art entirely. When one scull was deep downunderneath the water, the other would be flourishing wildly aboutin the air. To get a grip of the water with both at thesame time I had to stand up. The parade was crowded withnobility and gentry, and I had to pull past them in thisridiculous fashion. I landed half-way down the beach, andsecured the services of an old boatman to take me back.

I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who hasbeen hired by the hour. There is something so beautifullycalm and restful about his method. It is so free from thatfretful haste, that vehement striving, that is every day becomingmore and more the bane of nineteenth-century life. He isnot for ever straining himself to pass all the other boats.If another boat overtakes him and passes him it does not annoyhim; as a matter of fact, they all do overtake him and passhim—all those that are going his way. This wouldtrouble and irritate some people; the sublime equanimity of thehired boatman under the ordeal affords us a beautiful lessonagainst ambition and uppishness.

Plain practical rowing of the get-the-boat-along order is nota very difficult art to acquire, but it takes a good deal ofpractice before a man feels comfortable, when rowing pastgirls. It is the “time” that worries ayoungster. “It’s jolly funny,” he says,as for the twentieth time within five minutes he disentangles hissculls from yours; “I can get on all right when I’mby myself!”

To see two novices try to keep time with one another is veryamusing. Bow finds it impossible to keep pace with stroke,because stroke rows in such an extraordinary fashion.Stroke is intensely indignant at this, and explains that what hehas been endeavouring to do for the last ten minutes is to adapthis method to bow’s limited capacity. Bow, in turn,then becomes insulted, and requests stroke not to trouble hishead about him (bow), but to devote his mind to setting asensible stroke.

“Or, shall I take stroke?” he adds, withthe evident idea that that would at once put the whole matterright.

They splash along for another hundred yards with stillmoderate success, and then the whole secret of their troublebursts upon stroke like a flash of inspiration.

“I tell you what it is: you’ve got mysculls,” he cries, turning to bow; “pass yoursover.”

“Well, do you know, I’ve been wondering how it wasI couldn’t get on with these,” answers bow, quitebrightening up, and most willingly assisting in theexchange. “Now we shall be allright.”

But they are not—not even then. Stroke has tostretch his arms nearly out of their sockets to reach his scullsnow; while bow’s pair, at each recovery, hit him a violentblow in the chest. So they change back again, and come tothe conclusion that the man has given them the wrong setaltogether; and over their mutual abuse of this man they becomequite friendly and sympathetic.

George said he had often longed to take to punting for achange. Punting is not as easy as it looks. As inrowing, you soon learn how to get along and handle the craft, butit takes long practice before you can do this with dignity andwithout getting the water all up your sleeve.

One young man I knew had a very sad accident happen to him thefirst time he went punting. He had been getting on so wellthat he had grown quite cheeky over the business, and was walkingup and down the punt, working his pole with a careless grace thatwas quite fascinating to watch. Up he would march to thehead of the punt, plant his pole, and then run along right to theother end, just like an old punter. Oh! it was grand.

And it would all have gone on being grand if he had notunfortunately, while looking round to enjoy the scenery, takenjust one step more than there was any necessity for, and walkedoff the punt altogether. The pole was firmly fixed in themud, and he was left clinging to it while the punt driftedaway. It was an undignified position for him. A rudeboy on the bank immediately yelled out to a lagging chum to“hurry up and see a real monkey on a stick.”

I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck wouldhave it, we had not taken the proper precaution to bring out aspare pole with us. I could only sit and look at him.His expression as the pole slowly sank with him I shall neverforget; there was so much thought in it.

I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw himscramble out, sad and wet. I could not help laughing, helooked such a ridiculous figure. I continued to chuckle tomyself about it for some time, and then it was suddenly forced inupon me that really I had got very little to laugh at when I cameto think of it. Here was I, alone in a punt, without apole, drifting helplessly down mid-stream—possibly towardsa weir.

I began to feel very indignant with my friend for havingstepped overboard and gone off in that way. He might, atall events, have left me the pole.

I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came insight of a fishing-punt moored in mid-stream, in which sat twoold fishermen. They saw me bearing down upon them, and theycalled out to me to keep out of their way.

“I can’t,” I shouted back.

“But you don’t try,” they answered.

I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and theycaught me and lent me a pole. The weir was just fifty yardsbelow. I am glad they happened to be there.

The first time I went punting was in company with three otherfellows; they were going to show me how to do it. We couldnot all start together, so I said I would go down first and getout the punt, and then I could potter about and practice a bituntil they came.

I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were allengaged; so I had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank,watching the river, and waiting for my friends.

I had not been sitting there long before my attention becameattracted to a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise,wore a jacket and cap exactly like mine. He was evidently anovice at punting, and his performance was mostinteresting. You never knew what was going to happen whenhe put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself.Sometimes he shot up stream and sometimes he shot down stream,and at other times he simply spun round and came up the otherside of the pole. And with every result he seemed equallysurprised and annoyed.

The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in himafter a while, and to make bets with one another as to what wouldbe the outcome of his next push.

In the course of time my friends arrived on the opposite bank,and they stopped and watched him too. His back was towardsthem, and they only saw his jacket and cap. From this theyimmediately jumped to the conclusion that it was I, their belovedcompanion, who was making an exhibition of himself, and theirdelight knew no bounds. They commenced to chaff himunmercifully.

I did not grasp their mistake at first, and I thought,“How rude of them to go on like that, with a perfectstranger, too!” But before I could call out andreprove them, the explanation of the matter occurred to me, and Iwithdrew behind a tree.

Oh, how they enjoyed themselves, ridiculing that youngman! For five good minutes they stood there, shoutingribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him.They peppered him with stale jokes, they even made a few new onesand threw at him. They hurled at him all the private familyjokes belonging to our set, and which must have been perfectlyunintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand theirbrutal jibes any longer, he turned round on them, and they sawhis face!

I was glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left inthem to look very foolish. They explained to him that theyhad thought he was some one they knew. They said they hopedhe would not deem them capable of so insulting any one except apersonal friend of their own.

Of course their having mistaken him for a friend excusedit. I remember Harris telling me once of a bathingexperience he had at Boulogne. He was swimming about therenear the beach, when he felt himself suddenly seized by the neckfrom behind, and forcibly plunged under water. He struggledviolently, but whoever had got hold of him seemed to be a perfectHercules in strength, and all his efforts to escape wereunavailing. He had given up kicking, and was trying to turnhis thoughts upon solemn things, when his captor releasedhim.

He regained his feet, and looked round for his would-bemurderer. The assassin was standing close by him, laughingheartily, but the moment he caught sight of Harris’s face,as it emerged from the water, he started back and seemed quiteconcerned.

“I really beg your pardon,” he stammeredconfusedly, “but I took you for a friend ofmine!”

Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistakenhim for a relation, or he would probably have been drownedoutright.

Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practicetoo—though, as a boy, I did not think so. I had anidea it came natural to a body, like rounders and touch. Iknew another boy who held this view likewise, and so, one windyday, we thought we would try the sport. We were stoppingdown at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up theYare. We hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge,and started off.

“It’s rather a rough day,” said the man tous, as we put off: “better take in a reef and luff sharpwhen you get round the bend.”

We said we would make a point of it, and left him with acheery “Good-morning,” wondering to ourselves how you“luffed,” and where we were to get a“reef” from, and what we were to do with it when wehad got it.

We rowed until we were out of sight of the town, and then,with a wide stretch of water in front of us, and the wind blowinga perfect hurricane across it, we felt that the time had come tocommence operations.

Hector—I think that was his name—went on pullingwhile I unrolled the sail. It seemed a complicated job, butI accomplished it at length, and then came the question, whichwas the top end?

By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventuallydecided that the bottom was the top, and set to work to fix itupside-down. But it was a long time before we could get itup, either that way or any other way. The impression on themind of the sail seemed to be that we were playing at funerals,and that I was the corpse and itself was the winding-sheet.

When it found that this was not the idea, it hit me over thehead with the boom, and refused to do anything.

“Wet it,” said Hector; “drop it over and getit wet.”

He said people in ships always wetted the sails before theyput them up. So I wetted it; but that only made mattersworse than they were before. A dry sail clinging to yourlegs and wrapping itself round your head is not pleasant, but,when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.

We did get the thing up at last, the two of us together.We fixed it, not exactly upside down—more sidewayslike—and we tied it up to the mast with the painter, whichwe cut off for the purpose.

That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact.Why it did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. Ihave often thought about the matter since, but I have neversucceeded in arriving at any satisfactory explanation of thephenomenon.

Possibly the result may have been brought about by the naturalobstinacy of all things in this world. The boat maypossibly have come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory viewof our behaviour, that we had come out for a morning’ssuicide, and had thereupon determined to disappoint us.That is the only suggestion I can offer.

By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed tokeep inside the boat, but it was exhausting work. Hectorsaid that pirates and other seafaring people generally lashed therudder to something or other, and hauled in the main top-jib,during severe squalls, and thought we ought to try to dosomething of the kind; but I was for letting her have her head tothe wind.

As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended byadopting it, and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give herher head.

The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I havenever sailed at since, and don’t want to again. Then,at a bend, she heeled over till half her sail was underwater. Then she righted herself by a miracle and flew for along low bank of soft mud.

That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way intothe middle of it and then stuck. Finding that we were oncemore able to move according to our ideas, instead of beingpitched and thrown about like peas in a bladder, we creptforward, and cut down the sail.

We had had enough sailing. We did not want to overdo thething and get a surfeit of it. We had had a sail—agood all-round exciting, interesting sail—and now wethought we would have a row, just for a change like.

We took the sculls and tried to push the boat off the mud,and, in doing so, we broke one of the sculls. After that weproceeded with great caution, but they were a wretched old pair,and the second one cracked almost easier than the first, and leftus helpless.

The mud stretched out for about a hundred yards in front ofus, and behind us was the water. The only thing to be donewas to sit and wait until someone came by.

It was not the sort of day to attract people out on the river,and it was three hours before a soul came in sight. It wasan old fisherman who, with immense difficulty, at last rescuedus, and we were towed back in an ignominious fashion to theboat-yard.

What between tipping the man who had brought us home, andpaying for the broken sculls, and for having been out four hoursand a half, it cost us a pretty considerable number ofweeks’ pocket-money, that sail. But we learnedexperience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.

CHAPTER XVI.

Reading.—We are towed by steamlaunch.—Irritating behaviour of small boats.—How theyget in the way of steam launches.—George and Harris againshirk their work.—Rather a hackneyed story.—Streatleyand Goring.

We came in sight of Reading about eleven. The river isdirty and dismal here. One does not linger in theneighbourhood of Reading. The town itself is a famous oldplace, dating from the dim days of King Ethelred, when the Danesanchored their warships in the Kennet, and started from Readingto ravage all the land of Wessex; and here Ethelred and hisbrother Alfred fought and defeated them, Ethelred doing thepraying and Alfred the fighting.

In later years, Reading seems to have been regarded as a handyplace to run down to, when matters were becoming unpleasant inLondon. Parliament generally rushed off to Reading wheneverthere was a plague on at Westminster; and, in 1625, the Lawfollowed suit, and all the courts were held at Reading. Itmust have been worth while having a mere ordinary plague now andthen in London to get rid of both the lawyers and theParliament.

During the Parliamentary struggle, Reading was besieged by theEarl of Essex, and, a quarter of a century later, the Prince ofOrange routed King James’s troops there.

Henry I. lies buried at Reading, in the Benedictine abbeyfounded by him there, the ruins of which may still be seen; and,in this same abbey, great John of Gaunt was married to the LadyBlanche.

At Reading lock we came up with a steam launch, belonging tosome friends of mine, and they towed us up to within about a mileof Streatley. It is very delightful being towed up by alaunch. I prefer it myself to rowing. The run wouldhave been more delightful still, if it had not been for a lot ofwretched small boats that were continually getting in the way ofour launch, and, to avoid running down which, we had to becontinually easing and stopping. It is really mostannoying, the manner in which these rowing boats get in the wayof one’s launch up the river; something ought to done tostop it.

And they are so confoundedly impertinent, too, over it.You can whistle till you nearly burst your boiler before theywill trouble themselves to hurry. I would have one or twoof them run down now and then, if I had my way, just to teachthem all a lesson.

The river becomes very lovely from a little aboveReading. The railway rather spoils it near Tilehurst, butfrom Mapledurham up to Streatley it is glorious. A littleabove Mapledurham lock you pass Hardwick House, where Charles I.played bowls. The neighbourhood of Pangbourne, where thequaint little Swan Inn stands, must be as familiar to thehabitues of the Art Exhibitions as it is to its owninhabitants.

My friends’ launch cast us loose just below the grotto,and then Harris wanted to make out that it was my turn topull. This seemed to me most unreasonable. It hadbeen arranged in the morning that I should bring the boat up tothree miles above Reading. Well, here we were, ten milesabove Reading! Surely it was now their turn again.

I could not get either George or Harris to see the matter inits proper light, however; so, to save argument, I took thesculls. I had not been pulling for more than a minute orso, when George noticed something black floating on the water,and we drew up to it. George leant over, as we neared it,and laid hold of it. And then he drew back with a cry, anda blanched face.

It was the dead body of a woman. It lay very lightly onthe water, and the face was sweet and calm. It was not abeautiful face; it was too prematurely aged-looking, too thin anddrawn, to be that; but it was a gentle, lovable face, in spite ofits stamp of pinch and poverty, and upon it was that look ofrestful peace that comes to the faces of the sick sometimes whenat last the pain has left them.

Fortunately for us—we having no desire to be kepthanging about coroners’ courts—some men on the bankhad seen the body too, and now took charge of it from us.

We found out the woman’s story afterwards. Ofcourse it was the old, old vulgar tragedy. She had lovedand been deceived—or had deceived herself. Anyhow,she had sinned—some of us do now and then—and herfamily and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closedtheir doors against her.

Left to fight the world alone, with the millstone of her shamearound her neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For awhile she had kept both herself and the child on the twelveshillings a week that twelve hours’ drudgery a day procuredher, paying six shillings out of it for the child, and keepingher own body and soul together on the remainder.

Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together veryunitedly. They want to get away from each other when thereis only such a very slight bond as that between them; and oneday, I suppose, the pain and the dull monotony of it all hadstood before her eyes plainer than usual, and the mocking spectrehad frightened her. She had made one last appeal tofriends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, thevoice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; and then she had goneto see her child—had held it in her arms and kissed it, ina weary, dull sort of way, and without betraying any particularemotion of any kind, and had left it, after putting into its handa penny box of chocolate she had bought it, and afterwards, withher last few shillings, had taken a ticket and come down toGoring.

It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must havecentred about the wooded reaches and the bright green meadowsaround Goring; but women strangely hug the knife that stabs them,and, perhaps, amidst the gall, there may have mingled also sunnymemories of sweetest hours, spent upon those shadowed deeps overwhich the great trees bend their branches down so low.

She had wandered about the woods by the river’s brinkall day, and then, when evening fell and the grey twilight spreadits dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched her arms out to thesilent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. And theold river had taken her into its gentle arms, and had laid herweary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the pain.

Thus had she sinned in all things—sinned in living andin dying. God help her! and all other sinners, if any morethere be.

Goring on the left bank and Streatley on the right are both oreither charming places to stay at for a few days. Thereaches down to Pangbourne woo one for a sunny sail or for amoonlight row, and the country round about is full ofbeauty. We had intended to push on to Wallingford that day,but the sweet smiling face of the river here lured us to lingerfor a while; and so we left our boat at the bridge, and went upinto Streatley, and lunched at the “Bull,” much toMontmorency’s satisfaction.

They say that the hills on each ride of the stream here oncejoined and formed a barrier across what is now the Thames, andthat then the river ended there above Goring in one vastlake. I am not in a position either to contradict or affirmthis statement. I simply offer it.

It is an ancient place, Streatley, dating back, like mostriver-side towns and villages, to British and Saxon times.Goring is not nearly so pretty a little spot to stop at asStreatley, if you have your choice; but it is passing fair enoughin its way, and is nearer the railway in case you want to slipoff without paying your hotel bill.

CHAPTER XVII.

Washing day.—Fish and fishers.—Onthe art of angling.—A conscientious fly-fisher.—Afishy story.

We stayed two days at Streatley, and got our clotheswashed. We had tried washing them ourselves, in the river,under George’s superintendence, and it had been afailure. Indeed, it had been more than a failure, becausewe were worse off after we had washed our clothes than we werebefore. Before we had washed them, they had been very, verydirty, it is true; but they were just wearable.After we had washed them—well, the river betweenReading and Henley was much cleaner, after we had washed ourclothes in it, than it was before. All the dirt containedin the river between Reading and Henley, we collected, duringthat wash, and worked it into our clothes.

The washerwoman at Streatley said she felt she owed it toherself to charge us just three times the usual prices for thatwash. She said it had not been like washing, it had beenmore in the nature of excavating.

We paid the bill without a murmur.

The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishingcentre. There is some excellent fishing to be hadhere. The river abounds in pike, roach, dace, gudgeon, andeels, just here; and you can sit and fish for them all day.

Some people do. They never catch them. I neverknew anybody catch anything, up the Thames, except minnows anddead cats, but that has nothing to do, of course, withfishing! The local fisherman’s guide doesn’tsay a word about catching anything. All it says is theplace is “a good station for fishing;” and, from whatI have seen of the district, I am quite prepared to bear out thisstatement.

There is no spot in the world where you can get more fishing,or where you can fish for a longer period. Some fishermencome here and fish for a day, and others stop and fish for amonth. You can hang on and fish for a year, if you want to:it will be all the same.

The Angler’s Guide to the Thames says that“jack and perch are also to be had about here,” butthere the Angler’s Guide is wrong. Jack andperch may be about there. Indeed, I know for a factthat they are. You can see them there in shoals,when you are out for a walk along the banks: they come and standhalf out of the water with their mouths open for biscuits.And, if you go for a bathe, they crowd round, and get in yourway, and irritate you. But they are not to be“had” by a bit of worm on the end of a hook, noranything like it—not they!

I am not a good fisherman myself. I devoted aconsiderable amount of attention to the subject at one time, andwas getting on, as I thought, fairly well; but the old hands toldme that I should never be any real good at it, and advised me togive it up. They said that I was an extremely neat thrower,and that I seemed to have plenty of gumption for the thing, andquite enough constitutional laziness. But they were sure Ishould never make anything of a fisherman. I had not gotsufficient imagination.

They said that as a poet, or a shilling shocker, or areporter, or anything of that kind, I might be satisfactory, butthat, to gain any position as a Thames angler, would require moreplay of fancy, more power of invention than I appeared topossess.

Some people are under the impression that all that is requiredto make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily andwithout blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere baldfabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that.It is in the circ*mstantial detail, the embellishing touches ofprobability, the general air of scrupulous—almost ofpedantic—veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.

Anybody can come in and say, “Oh, I caught fifteen dozenperch yesterday evening;” or “Last Monday I landed agudgeon, weighing eighteen pounds, and measuring three feet fromthe tip to the tail.”

There is no art, no skill, required for that sort ofthing. It shows pluck, but that is all.

No; your accomplished angler would scorn to tell a lie, thatway. His method is a study in itself.

He comes in quietly with his hat on, appropriates the mostcomfortable chair, lights his pipe, and commences to puff insilence. He lets the youngsters brag away for a while, andthen, during a momentary lull, he removes the pipe from hismouth, and remarks, as he knocks the ashes out against thebars:

“Well, I had a haul on Tuesday evening that it’snot much good my telling anybody about.”

“Oh! why’s that?” they ask.

“Because I don’t expect anybody would believe meif I did,” replies the old fellow calmly, and without evena tinge of bitterness in his tone, as he refills his pipe, andrequests the landlord to bring him three of Scotch, cold.

There is a pause after this, nobody feeling sufficiently sureof himself to contradict the old gentleman. So he has to goon by himself without any encouragement.

“No,” he continues thoughtfully; “Ishouldn’t believe it myself if anybody told it to me, butit’s a fact, for all that. I had been sitting thereall the afternoon and had caught literally nothing—except afew dozen dace and a score of jack; and I was just about givingit up as a bad job when I suddenly felt a rather smart pull atthe line. I thought it was another little one, and I wentto jerk it up. Hang me, if I could move the rod! Ittook me half-an-hour—half-an-hour, sir!—to land thatfish; and every moment I thought the line was going tosnap! I reached him at last, and what do you think itwas? A sturgeon! a forty pound sturgeon! taken on a line,sir! Yes, you may well look surprised—I’ll haveanother three of Scotch, landlord, please.”

And then he goes on to tell of the astonishment of everybodywho saw it; and what his wife said, when he got home, and of whatJoe Buggles thought about it.

I asked the landlord of an inn up the river once, if it didnot injure him, sometimes, listening to the tales that thefishermen about there told him; and he said:

“Oh, no; not now, sir. It did used to knock meover a bit at first, but, lor love you! me and the missus welistens to ’em all day now. It’s whatyou’re used to, you know. It’s whatyou’re used to.”

I knew a young man once, he was a most conscientious fellow,and, when he took to fly-fishing, he determined never toexaggerate his hauls by more than twenty-five per cent.

“When I have caught forty fish,” said he,“then I will tell people that I have caught fifty, and soon. But I will not lie any more than that, because it issinful to lie.”

But the twenty-five per cent. plan did not work well atall. He never was able to use it. The greatest numberof fish he ever caught in one day was three, and you can’tadd twenty-five per cent. to three—at least, not infish.

So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third;but that, again, was awkward, when he had only caught one or two;so, to simplify matters, he made up his mind to just double thequantity.

He stuck to this arrangement for a couple of months, and thenhe grew dissatisfied with it. Nobody believed him when hetold them that he only doubled, and he, therefore, gained nocredit that way whatever, while his moderation put him at adisadvantage among the other anglers. When he had reallycaught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it used tomake him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact hadonly caught one, going about telling people he had landed twodozen.

So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself,which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was tocount each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to beginwith. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all,then he said he had caught ten fish—you could never catchless than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation ofit. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, hecalled it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty,and so on.

It is a simple and easily worked plan, and there has been sometalk lately of its being made use of by the angling fraternity ingeneral. Indeed, the Committee of the Thames Angler’sAssociation did recommend its adoption about two years ago, butsome of the older members opposed it. They said they wouldconsider the idea if the number were doubled, and each fishcounted as twenty.

If ever you have an evening to spare, up the river, I shouldadvise you to drop into one of the little village inns, and takea seat in the tap-room. You will be nearly sure to meet oneor two old rod-men, sipping their toddy there, and they will tellyou enough fishy stories, in half an hour, to give youindigestion for a month.

George and I—I don’t know what had become ofHarris; he had gone out and had a shave, early in the afternoon,and had then come back and spent full forty minutes inpipeclaying his shoes, we had not seen him since—George andI, therefore, and the dog, left to ourselves, went for a walk toWallingford on the second evening, and, coming home, we called inat a little river-side inn, for a rest, and other things.

We went into the parlour and sat down. There was an oldfellow there, smoking a long clay pipe, and we naturally beganchatting.

He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told himthat it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told eachother that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; andGeorge said the crops seemed to be coming up nicely.

After that it came out, somehow or other, that we werestrangers in the neighbourhood, and that we were going away thenext morning.

Then a pause ensued in the conversation, during which oureyes wandered round the room. They finally rested upon adusty old glass-case, fixed very high up above the chimney-piece,and containing a trout. It rather fascinated me, thattrout; it was such a monstrous fish. In fact, at firstglance, I thought it was a cod.

“Ah!” said the old gentleman, following thedirection of my gaze, “fine fellow that, ain’the?”

“Quite uncommon,” I murmured; and George asked theold man how much he thought it weighed.

“Eighteen pounds six ounces,” said our friend,rising and taking down his coat. “Yes,” hecontinued, “it wur sixteen year ago, come the thirdo’ next month, that I landed him. I caught him justbelow the bridge with a minnow. They told me he wur in theriver, and I said I’d have him, and so I did. Youdon’t see many fish that size about here now, I’mthinking. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night.”

And out he went, and left us alone.

We could not take our eyes off the fish after that. Itreally was a remarkably fine fish. We were still looking atit, when the local carrier, who had just stopped at the inn, cameto the door of the room with a pot of beer in his hand, and healso looked at the fish.

“Good-sized trout, that,” said George, turninground to him.

“Ah! you may well say that, sir,” replied the man;and then, after a pull at his beer, he added, “Maybe youwasn’t here, sir, when that fish was caught?”

“No,” we told him. We were strangers in theneighbourhood.

“Ah!” said the carrier, “then, of course,how should you? It was nearly five years ago that I caughtthat trout.”

“Oh! was it you who caught it, then?” said I.

“Yes, sir,” replied the genial old fellow.“I caught him just below the lock—leastways, what wasthe lock then—one Friday afternoon; and the remarkablething about it is that I caught him with a fly. I’dgone out pike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, andwhen I saw that whopper on the end of my line, blest if itdidn’t quite take me aback. Well, you see, he weighedtwenty-six pound. Good-night, gentlemen,good-night.”

Five minutes afterwards, a third man came in, and describedhow he had caught it early one morning, with bleak; andthen he left, and a stolid, solemn-looking, middle-agedindividual came in, and sat down over by the window.

None of us spoke for a while; but, at length, George turned tothe new comer, and said:

“I beg your pardon, I hope you will forgive the libertythat we—perfect strangers in the neighbourhood—aretaking, but my friend here and myself would be so much obliged ifyou would tell us how you caught that trout up there.”

“Why, who told you I caught that trout!” was thesurprised query.

We said that nobody had told us so, but somehow or other wefelt instinctively that it was he who had done it.

“Well, it’s a most remarkable thing—mostremarkable,” answered the stolid stranger, laughing;“because, as a matter of fact, you are quite right. Idid catch it. But fancy your guessing it like that.Dear me, it’s really a most remarkable thing.”

And then he went on, and told us how it had taken him half anhour to land it, and how it had broken his rod. He said hehad weighed it carefully when he reached home, and it had turnedthe scale at thirty-four pounds.

He went in his turn, and when he was gone, the landlord camein to us. We told him the various histories we had heardabout his trout, and he was immensely amused, and we all laughedvery heartily.

“Fancy Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and oldBilly Maunders all telling you that they had caught it. Ha!ha! ha! Well, that is good,” said the honest oldfellow, laughing heartily. “Yes, they are the sort togive it me, to put up in my parlour, if theyhad caught it, they are! Ha! ha! ha!”

And then he told us the real history of the fish. Itseemed that he had caught it himself, years ago, when he wasquite a lad; not by any art or skill, but by that unaccountableluck that appears to always wait upon a boy when he plays the wagfrom school, and goes out fishing on a sunny afternoon, with abit of string tied on to the end of a tree.

He said that bringing home that trout had saved him from awhacking, and that even his school-master had said it was worththe rule-of-three and practice put together.

He was called out of the room at this point, and George and Iagain turned our gaze upon the fish.

It really was a most astonishing trout. The more welooked at it, the more we marvelled at it.

It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of achair to get a better view of it.

And then the chair slipped, and George clutched wildly at thetrout-case to save himself, and down it came with a crash, Georgeand the chair on top of it.

“You haven’t injured the fish, have you?” Icried in alarm, rushing up.

“I hope not,” said George, rising cautiously andlooking about.

But he had. That trout lay shattered into a thousandfragments—I say a thousand, but they may have only beennine hundred. I did not count them.

We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed troutshould break up into little pieces like that.

And so it would have been strange and unaccountable, if it hadbeen a stuffed trout, but it was not.

That trout was plaster-of-Paris.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Locks.—George and I arephotographed.—Wallingford.—Dorchester.—Abingdon.—Afamily man.—A good spot for drowning.—A difficult bitof water.—Demoralizing effect of river air.

We left Streatley early the next morning, and pulled up toCulham, and slept under the canvas, in the backwater there.

The river is not extraordinarily interesting between Streatleyand Wallingford. From Cleve you get a stretch of six and ahalf miles without a lock. I believe this is the longestuninterrupted stretch anywhere above Teddington, and the OxfordClub make use of it for their trial eights.

But however satisfactory this absence of locks may be torowing-men, it is to be regretted by the merepleasure-seeker.

For myself, I am fond of locks. They pleasantly breakthe monotony of the pull. I like sitting in the boat andslowly rising out of the cool depths up into new reaches andfresh views; or sinking down, as it were, out of the world, andthen waiting, while the gloomy gates creak, and the narrow stripof day-light between them widens till the fair smiling river liesfull before you, and you push your little boat out from its briefprison on to the welcoming waters once again.

They are picturesque little spots, these locks. Thestout old lock-keeper, or his cheerful-looking wife, orbright-eyed daughter, are pleasant folk to have a passing chatwith. [287] You meet other boats there, andriver gossip is exchanged. The Thames would not be thefairyland it is without its flower-decked locks.

Talking of locks reminds me of an accident George and I verynearly had one summer’s morning at Hampton Court.

It was a glorious day, and the lock was crowded; and, as is acommon practice up the river, a speculative photographer wastaking a picture of us all as we lay upon the rising waters.

I did not catch what was going on at first, and was,therefore, extremely surprised at noticing George hurriedlysmooth out his trousers, ruffle up his hair, and stick his cap onin a rakish manner at the back of his head, and then, assuming anexpression of mingled affability and sadness, sit down in agraceful attitude, and try to hide his feet.

My first idea was that he had suddenly caught sight of somegirl he knew, and I looked about to see who it was.Everybody in the lock seemed to have been suddenly struckwooden. They were all standing or sitting about in the mostquaint and curious attitudes I have ever seen off a Japanesefan. All the girls were smiling. Oh, they did look sosweet! And all the fellows were frowning, and looking sternand noble.

And then, at last, the truth flashed across me, and I wonderedif I should be in time. Ours was the first boat, and itwould be unkind of me to spoil the man’s picture, Ithought.

So I faced round quickly, and took up a position in the prow,where I leant with careless grace upon the hitcher, in anattitude suggestive of agility and strength. I arranged myhair with a curl over the forehead, and threw an air of tenderwistfulness into my expression, mingled with a touch of cynicism,which I am told suits me.

As we stood, waiting for the eventful moment, I heard someonebehind call out:

“Hi! look at your nose.”

I could not turn round to see what was the matter, and whosenose it was that was to be looked at. I stole a side-glanceat George’s nose! It was all right—at allevents, there was nothing wrong with it that could bealtered. I squinted down at my own, and that seemed allthat could be expected also.

“Look at your nose, you stupid ass!” came the samevoice again, louder.

And then another voice cried:

“Push your nose out, can’t you, you—you twowith the dog!”

Neither George nor I dared to turn round. Theman’s hand was on the cap, and the picture might be takenany moment. Was it us they were calling to? What wasthe matter with our noses? Why were they to be pushedout!

But now the whole lock started yelling, and a stentorian voicefrom the back shouted:

“Look at your boat, sir; you in the red and blackcaps. It’s your two corpses that will get taken inthat photo, if you ain’t quick.”

We looked then, and saw that the nose of our boat had gotfixed under the woodwork of the lock, while the in-coming waterwas rising all around it, and tilting it up. In anothermoment we should be over. Quick as thought, we each seizedan oar, and a vigorous blow against the side of the lock with thebutt-ends released the boat, and sent us sprawling on ourbacks.

We did not come out well in that photograph, George andI. Of course, as was to be expected, our luck ordained it,that the man should set his wretched machine in motion at theprecise moment that we were both lying on our backs with a wildexpression of “Where am I? and what is it?” on ourfaces, and our four feet waving madly in the air.

Our feet were undoubtedly the leading article in thatphotograph. Indeed, very little else was to be seen.They filled up the foreground entirely. Behind them, youcaught glimpses of the other boats, and bits of the surroundingscenery; but everything and everybody else in the lock looked soutterly insignificant and paltry compared with our feet, that allthe other people felt quite ashamed of themselves, and refused tosubscribe to the picture.

The owner of one steam launch, who had bespoke six copies,rescinded the order on seeing the negative. He said hewould take them if anybody could show him his launch, but nobodycould. It was somewhere behind George’s rightfoot.

There was a good deal of unpleasantness over thebusiness. The photographer thought we ought to take a dozencopies each, seeing that the photo was about nine-tenths us, butwe declined. We said we had no objection to beingphoto’d full-length, but we preferred being taken the rightway up.

Wallingford, six miles above Streatley, is a very ancienttown, and has been an active centre for the making of Englishhistory. It was a rude, mud-built town in the time of theBritons, who squatted there, until the Roman legions evictedthem; and replaced their clay-baked walls by mightyfortifications, the trace of which Time has not yet succeeded insweeping away, so well those old-world masons knew how tobuild.

But Time, though he halted at Roman walls, soon crumbledRomans to dust; and on the ground, in later years, fought savageSaxons and huge Danes, until the Normans came.

It was a walled and fortified town up to the time of theParliamentary War, when it suffered a long and bitter siege fromFairfax. It fell at last, and then the walls wererazed.

From Wallingford up to Dorchester the neighbourhood of theriver grows more hilly, varied, and picturesque. Dorchesterstands half a mile from the river. It can be reached bypaddling up the Thame, if you have a small boat; but the best wayis to leave the river at Day’s Lock, and take a walk acrossthe fields. Dorchester is a delightfully peaceful oldplace, nestling in stillness and silence and drowsiness.

Dorchester, like Wallingford, was a city in ancient Britishtimes; it was then called Caer Doren, “the city on thewater.” In more recent times the Romans formed agreat camp here, the fortifications surrounding which now seemlike low, even hills. In Saxon days it was the capital ofWessex. It is very old, and it was very strong and greatonce. Now it sits aside from the stirring world, and nodsand dreams.

Round Clifton Hampden, itself a wonderfully pretty village,old-fashioned, peaceful, and dainty with flowers, the riverscenery is rich and beautiful. If you stay the night onland at Clifton, you cannot do better than put up at the“Barley Mow.” It is, without exception, Ishould say, the quaintest, most old-world inn up the river.It stands on the right of the bridge, quite away from thevillage. Its low-pitched gables and thatched roof andlatticed windows give it quite a story-book appearance, whileinside it is even still more once-upon-a-timeyfied.

It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novelto stay at. The heroine of a modern novel is always“divinely tall,” and she is ever “drawingherself up to her full height.” At the “BarleyMow” she would bump her head against the ceiling each timeshe did this.

It would also be a bad house for a drunken man to put upat. There are too many surprises in the way of unexpectedsteps down into this room and up into that; and as for gettingupstairs to his bedroom, or ever finding his bed when he got up,either operation would be an utter impossibility to him.

We were up early the next morning, as we wanted to be inOxford by the afternoon. It is surprising how early onecan get up, when camping out. One does not yearn for“just another five minutes” nearly so much, lyingwrapped up in a rug on the boards of a boat, with a Gladstone bagfor a pillow, as one does in a featherbed. We had finishedbreakfast, and were through Clifton Lock by half-past eight.

From Clifton to Culham the river banks are flat, monotonous,and uninteresting, but, after you get through CulhalmLock—the coldest and deepest lock on the river—thelandscape improves.

At Abingdon, the river passes by the streets. Abingdonis a typical country town of the smaller order—quiet,eminently respectable, clean, and desperately dull. Itprides itself on being old, but whether it can compare in thisrespect with Wallingford and Dorchester seems doubtful. Afamous abbey stood here once, and within what is left of itssanctified walls they brew bitter ale nowadays.

In St. Nicholas Church, at Abingdon, there is a monument toJohn Blackwall and his wife Jane, who both, after leading a happymarried life, died on the very same day, August 21, 1625; and inSt. Helen’s Church, it is recorded that W. Lee, who died in1637, “had in his lifetime issue from his loins two hundredlacking but three.” If you work this out you willfind that Mr. W. Lee’s family numbered one hundred andninety-seven. Mr. W. Lee—five times Mayor ofAbingdon—was, no doubt, a benefactor to his generation, butI hope there are not many of his kind about in this overcrowdednineteenth century.

From Abingdon to Nuneham Courteney is a lovely stretch.Nuneham Park is well worth a visit. It can be viewed onTuesdays and Thursdays. The house contains a finecollection of pictures and curiosities, and the grounds are verybeautiful.

The pool under Sandford lasher, just behind the lock, is avery good place to drown yourself in. The undercurrent isterribly strong, and if you once get down into it you are allright. An obelisk marks the spot where two men have alreadybeen drowned, while bathing there; and the steps of the obeliskare generally used as a diving-board by young men now who wish tosee if the place really is dangerous.

Iffley Lock and Mill, a mile before you reach Oxford, is afavourite subject with the river-loving brethren of thebrush. The real article, however, is rather disappointing,after the pictures. Few things, I have noticed, come quiteup to the pictures of them, in this world.

We passed through Iffley Lock at about half-past twelve, andthen, having tidied up the boat and made all ready for landing,we set to work on our last mile.

Between Iffley and Oxford is the most difficult bit of theriver I know. You want to be born on that bit of water, tounderstand it. I have been over it a fairish number oftimes, but I have never been able to get the hang of it.The man who could row a straight course from Oxford to Iffleyought to be able to live comfortably, under one roof, with hiswife, his mother-in-law, his elder sister, and the old servantwho was in the family when he was a baby.

First the current drives you on to the right bank, and then onto the left, then it takes you out into the middle, turns youround three times, and carries you up stream again, and alwaysends by trying to smash you up against a college barge.

Of course, as a consequence of this, we got in the way of agood many other boats, during the mile, and they in ours, and, ofcourse, as a consequence of that, a good deal of bad languageoccurred.

I don’t know why it should be, but everybody is alwaysso exceptionally irritable on the river. Little mishaps,that you would hardly notice on dry land, drive you nearlyfrantic with rage, when they occur on the water. WhenHarris or George makes an ass of himself on dry land, I smileindulgently; when they behave in a chuckle-head way on the river,I use the most blood-curdling language to them. Whenanother boat gets in my way, I feel I want to take an oar andkill all the people in it.

The mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent andblood-thirsty when in a boat. I did a little boating oncewith a young lady. She was naturally of the sweetest andgentlest disposition imaginable, but on the river it was quiteawful to hear her.

“Oh, drat the man!” she would exclaim, when someunfortunate sculler would get in her way; “why don’the look where he’s going?”

And, “Oh, bother the silly old thing!” she wouldsay indignantly, when the sail would not go up properly.And she would catch hold of it, and shake it quite brutally.

Yet, as I have said, when on shore she was kind-hearted andamiable enough.

The air of the river has a demoralising effect uponone’s temper, and this it is, I suppose, which causes evenbarge men to be sometimes rude to one another, and to uselanguage which, no doubt, in their calmer moments theyregret.

CHAPTER XIX.

Oxford.—Montmorency’s idea ofHeaven.—The hired up-river boat, its beauties andadvantages.—The “Pride of theThames.”—The weather changes.—The river underdifferent aspects.—Not a cheerful evening.—Yearningsfor the unattainable.—The cheery chat goesround.—George performs upon the banjo.—A mournfulmelody.—Another wet day.—Flight.—A littlesupper and a toast.

We spent two very pleasant days at Oxford. There areplenty of dogs in the town of Oxford. Montmorency hadeleven fights on the first day, and fourteen on the second, andevidently thought he had got to heaven.

Among folk too constitutionally weak, or too constitutionallylazy, whichever it may be, to relish up-stream work, it is acommon practice to get a boat at Oxford, and row down. Forthe energetic, however, the up-stream journey is certainly to bepreferred. It does not seem good to be always going withthe current. There is more satisfaction in squaringone’s back, and fighting against it, and winningone’s way forward in spite of it—at least, so I feel,when Harris and George are sculling and I am steering.

To those who do contemplate making Oxford theirstarting-place, I would say, take your own boat—unless, ofcourse, you can take someone else’s without any possibledanger of being found out. The boats that, as a rule, arelet for hire on the Thames above Marlow, are very goodboats. They are fairly water-tight; and so long as they arehandled with care, they rarely come to pieces, or sink.There are places in them to sit down on, and they are completewith all the necessary arrangements—or nearly all—toenable you to row them and steer them.

But they are not ornamental. The boat you hire up theriver above Marlow is not the sort of boat in which you can flashabout and give yourself airs. The hired up-river boat verysoon puts a stop to any nonsense of that sort on the part of itsoccupants. That is its chief—one may say, its onlyrecommendation.

The man in the hired up-river boat is modest andretiring. He likes to keep on the shady side, underneaththe trees, and to do most of his travelling early in the morningor late at night, when there are not many people about on theriver to look at him.

When the man in the hired up-river boat sees anyone he knows,he gets out on to the bank, and hides behind a tree.

I was one of a party who hired an up-river boat one summer,for a few days’ trip. We had none of us ever seen thehired up-river boat before; and we did not know what it was whenwe did see it.

We had written for a boat—a double sculling skiff; andwhen we went down with our bags to the yard, and gave our names,the man said:

“Oh, yes; you’re the party that wrote for adouble sculling skiff. It’s all right. Jim,fetch round The Pride of the Thames.”

The boy went, and re-appeared five minutes afterwards,struggling with an antediluvian chunk of wood, that looked asthough it had been recently dug out of somewhere, and dug outcarelessly, so as to have been unnecessarily damaged in theprocess.

My own idea, on first catching sight of the object, was thatit was a Roman relic of some sort,—relic of what Ido not know, possibly of a coffin.

The neighbourhood of the upper Thames is rich in Roman relics,and my surmise seemed to me a very probable one; but our seriousyoung man, who is a bit of a geologist, pooh-poohed my Romanrelic theory, and said it was clear to the meanest intellect (inwhich category he seemed to be grieved that he could notconscientiously include mine) that the thing the boy had foundwas the fossil of a whale; and he pointed out to us variousevidences proving that it must have belonged to the preglacialperiod.

To settle the dispute, we appealed to the boy. We toldhim not to be afraid, but to speak the plain truth: Was it thefossil of a pre-Adamite whale, or was it an early Romancoffin?

The boy said it was The Pride of the Thames.

We thought this a very humorous answer on the part of the boyat first, and somebody gave him twopence as a reward for hisready wit; but when he persisted in keeping up the joke, as wethought, too long, we got vexed with him.

“Come, come, my lad!” said our captain sharply,“don’t let us have any nonsense. You take yourmother’s washing-tub home again, and bring us aboat.”

The boat-builder himself came up then, and assured us, on hisword, as a practical man, that the thing really was aboat—was, in fact, the boat, the “doublesculling skiff” selected to take us on our trip down theriver.

We grumbled a good deal. We thought he might, at least,have had it whitewashed or tarred—had something doneto it to distinguish it from a bit of a wreck; but he could notsee any fault in it.

He even seemed offended at our remarks. He said he hadpicked us out the best boat in all his stock, and he thought wemight have been more grateful.

He said it, The Pride of the Thames, had been in use,just as it now stood (or rather as it now hung together), for thelast forty years, to his knowledge, and nobody hadcomplained of it before, and he did not see why we should be thefirst to begin.

We argued no more.

We fastened the so-called boat together with some pieces ofstring, got a bit of wall-paper and pasted over the shabbierplaces, said our prayers, and stepped on board.

They charged us thirty-five shillings for the loan of theremnant for six days; and we could have bought the thingout-and-out for four-and-sixpence at any sale of drift-wood roundthe coast.

The weather changed on the third day,—Oh! I am talkingabout our present trip now,—and we started from Oxford uponour homeward journey in the midst of a steady drizzle.

The river—with the sunlight flashing from its dancingwavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glintingthrough the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o’er theshallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kissesto the lilies, wantoning with the weirs’ white waters,silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tinytownlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in therushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on manya far sail, making soft the air with glory—is a goldenfairy stream.

But the river—chill and weary, with the ceaselessrain-drops falling on its brown and sluggish waters, with a soundas of a woman, weeping low in some dark chamber; while the woods,all dark and silent, shrouded in their mists of vapour, standlike ghosts upon the margin; silent ghosts with eyes reproachful,like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghosts of friendsneglected—is a spirit-haunted water through the land ofvain regrets.

Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looksat us with such dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has diedaway from out of her. It makes us sad to be with her then;she does not seem to know us or to care for us. She is as awidow who has lost the husband she loved, and her children touchher hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smile fromher.

We rowed on all that day through the rain, and very melancholywork it was. We pretended, at first, that we enjoyedit. We said it was a change, and that we liked to see theriver under all its different aspects. We said we could notexpect to have it all sunshine, nor should we wish it. Wetold each other that Nature was beautiful, even in her tears.

Indeed, Harris and I were quite enthusiastic about thebusiness, for the first few hours. And we sang a song abouta gipsy’s life, and how delightful a gipsy’sexistence was!—free to storm and sunshine, and to everywind that blew!—and how he enjoyed the rain, and what a lotof good it did him; and how he laughed at people who didn’tlike it.

George took the fun more soberly, and stuck to theumbrella.

We hoisted the cover before we had lunch, and kept it up allthe afternoon, just leaving a little space in the bow, from whichone of us could paddle and keep a look-out. In this way wemade nine miles, and pulled up for the night a little belowDay’s Lock.

I cannot honestly say that we had a merry evening. Therain poured down with quiet persistency. Everything in theboat was damp and clammy. Supper was not a success.Cold veal pie, when you don’t feel hungry, is apt tocloy. I felt I wanted whitebait and a cutlet; Harrisbabbled of soles and white-sauce, and passed the remains of hispie to Montmorency, who declined it, and, apparently insulted bythe offer, went and sat over at the other end of the boat byhimself.

George requested that we would not talk about these things, atall events until he had finished his cold boiled beef withoutmustard.

We played penny nap after supper. We played for about anhour and a half, by the end of which time George had wonfourpence—George always is lucky at cards—and Harrisand I had lost exactly twopence each.

We thought we would give up gambling then. As Harrissaid, it breeds an unhealthy excitement when carried toofar. George offered to go on and give us our revenge; butHarris and I decided not to battle any further against Fate.

After that, we mixed ourselves some toddy, and sat round andtalked. George told us about a man he had known, who hadcome up the river two years ago and who had slept out in a dampboat on just such another night as that was, and it had given himrheumatic fever, and nothing was able to save him, and he haddied in great agony ten days afterwards. George said he wasquite a young man, and was engaged to be married. He saidit was one of the saddest things he had ever known.

And that put Harris in mind of a friend of his, who had beenin the Volunteers, and who had slept out under canvas one wetnight down at Aldershot, “on just such another night asthis,” said Harris; and he had woke up in the morning acripple for life. Harris said he would introduce us both tothe man when we got back to town; it would make our hearts bleedto see him.

This naturally led to some pleasant chat about sciatica,fevers, chills, lung diseases, and bronchitis; and Harris saidhow very awkward it would be if one of us were taken seriouslyill in the night, seeing how far away we were from a doctor.

There seemed to be a desire for something frolicksome tofollow upon this conversation, and in a weak moment I suggestedthat George should get out his banjo, and see if he could notgive us a comic song.

I will say for George that he did not want any pressing.There was no nonsense about having left his music at home, oranything of that sort. He at once fished out hisinstrument, and commenced to play “Two Lovely BlackEyes.”

I had always regarded “Two Lovely Black Eyes” asrather a commonplace tune until that evening. The rich veinof sadness that George extracted from it quite surprised me.

The desire that grew upon Harris and myself, as the mournfulstrains progressed, was to fall upon each other’s necks andweep; but by great effort we kept back the rising tears, andlistened to the wild yearnful melody in silence.

When the chorus came we even made a desperate effort to bemerry. We re-filled our glasses and joined in; Harris, in avoice trembling with emotion, leading, and George and I followinga few words behind:

“Twolovely black eyes;
Oh! what a surprise!
Only for telling a man he was wrong,
Two—”

There we broke down. The unutterable pathos ofGeorge’s accompaniment to that “two” we were,in our then state of depression, unable to bear. Harrissobbed like a little child, and the dog howled till I thought hisheart or his jaw must surely break.

George wanted to go on with another verse. He thoughtthat when he had got a little more into the tune, and could throwmore “abandon,” as it were, into the rendering, itmight not seem so sad. The feeling of the majority,however, was opposed to the experiment.

There being nothing else to do, we went to bed—that is,we undressed ourselves, and tossed about at the bottom of theboat for some three or four hours. After which, we managedto get some fitful slumber until five a.m., when we all got upand had breakfast.

The second day was exactly like the first. The raincontinued to pour down, and we sat, wrapped up in ourmackintoshes, underneath the canvas, and drifted slowly down.

One of us—I forget which one now, but I rather think itwas myself—made a few feeble attempts during the course ofthe morning to work up the old gipsy foolishness about beingchildren of Nature and enjoying the wet; but it did not go downwell at all. That—

“I care not for the rain, not I!”

was so painfully evident, as expressing the sentiments of eachof us, that to sing it seemed unnecessary.

On one point we were all agreed, and that was that, come whatmight, we would go through with this job to the bitter end.We had come out for a fortnight’s enjoyment on the river,and a fortnight’s enjoyment on the river we meant tohave. If it killed us! well, that would be a sad thing forour friends and relations, but it could not be helped. Wefelt that to give in to the weather in a climate such as ourswould be a most disastrous precedent.

“It’s only two days more,” said Harris,“and we are young and strong. We may get over it allright, after all.”

At about four o’clock we began to discuss ourarrangements for the evening. We were a little past Goringthen, and we decided to paddle on to Pangbourne, and put up therefor the night.

“Another jolly evening!” murmured George.

We sat and mused on the prospect. We should be in atPangbourne by five. We should finish dinner at, say,half-past six. After that we could walk about the villagein the pouring rain until bed-time; or we could sit in adimly-lit bar-parlour and read the almanac.

“Why, the Alhambra would be almost more lively,”said Harris, venturing his head outside the cover for a momentand taking a survey of the sky.

“With a little supper at the --- [311] to follow,” I added, halfunconsciously.

“Yes it’s almost a pity we’ve made up ourminds to stick to this boat,” answered Harris; and thenthere was silence for a while.

“If we hadn’t made up our minds to contractour certain deaths in this bally old coffin,” observedGeorge, casting a glance of intense malevolence over the boat,“it might be worth while to mention that there’s atrain leaves Pangbourne, I know, soon after five, which wouldjust land us in town in comfortable time to get a chop, and thengo on to the place you mentioned afterwards.”

Nobody spoke. We looked at one another, and each oneseemed to see his own mean and guilty thoughts reflected in thefaces of the others. In silence, we dragged out andoverhauled the Gladstone. We looked up the river and downthe river; not a soul was in sight!

Twenty minutes later, three figures, followed by ashamed-looking dog, might have been seen creeping stealthily fromthe boat-house at the “Swan” towards the railwaystation, dressed in the following neither neat nor gaudycostume:

Black leather shoes, dirty; suit of boating flannels, verydirty; brown felt hat, much battered; mackintosh, very wet;umbrella.

We had deceived the boatman at Pangbourne. We had nothad the face to tell him that we were running away from therain. We had left the boat, and all it contained, in hischarge, with instructions that it was to be ready for us at ninethe next morning. If, we said—if anythingunforeseen should happen, preventing our return, we would writeto him.

We reached Paddington at seven, and drove direct to therestaurant I have before described, where we partook of a lightmeal, left Montmorency, together with suggestions for a supper tobe ready at half-past ten, and then continued our way toLeicester Square.

We attracted a good deal of attention at the Alhambra.On our presenting ourselves at the paybox we were grufflydirected to go round to Castle Street, and were informed that wewere half-an-hour behind our time.

We convinced the man, with some difficulty, that we werenot “the world-renowned contortionists from theHimalaya Mountains,” and he took our money and let uspass.

Inside we were a still greater success. Our fine bronzedcountenances and picturesque clothes were followed round theplace with admiring gaze. We were the cynosure of everyeye.

It was a proud moment for us all.

We adjourned soon after the first ballet, and wended our wayback to the restaurant, where supper was already awaiting us.

I must confess to enjoying that supper. For about tendays we seemed to have been living, more or less, on nothing butcold meat, cake, and bread and jam. It had been a simple, anutritious diet; but there had been nothing exciting about it,and the odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, andthe sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a verywelcome visitor at the door of our inner man.

We pegged and quaffed away in silence for a while, until thetime came when, instead of sitting bolt upright, and grasping theknife and fork firmly, we leant back in our chairs and workedslowly and carelessly—when we stretched out our legsbeneath the table, let our napkins fall, unheeded, to the floor,and found time to more critically examine the smoky ceiling thanwe had hitherto been able to do—when we rested our glassesat arm’s-length upon the table, and felt good, andthoughtful, and forgiving.

Then Harris, who was sitting next the window, drew aside thecurtain and looked out upon the street.

It glistened darkly in the wet, the dim lamps flickered witheach gust, the rain splashed steadily into the puddles andtrickled down the water-spouts into the running gutters. Afew soaked wayfarers hurried past, crouching beneath theirdripping umbrellas, the women holding up their skirts.

“Well,” said Harris, reaching his hand out for hisglass, “we have had a pleasant trip, and my hearty thanksfor it to old Father Thames—but I think we did well tochuck it when we did. Here’s to Three Men well out ofa Boat!”

And Montmorency, standing on his hind legs, before the window,peering out into the night, gave a short bark of decidedconcurrence with the toast.

Footnotes.

[287] Or rather were. TheConservancy of late seems to have constituted itself into asociety for the employment of idiots. A good many of thenew lock-keepers, especially in the more crowded portions of theriver, are excitable, nervous old men, quite unfitted for theirpost.

[311] A capital little out-of-the-wayrestaurant, in the neighbourhood of ---, where you can get one ofthe best-cooked and cheapest little French dinners or suppersthat I know of, with an excellent bottle of Beaune, forthree-and-six; and which I am not going to be idiot enough toadvertise.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN IN A BOAT***