<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
<p class="gutsumm">Household duties.—Love of
work.—The old river hand, what he does and what he tells
you he has done.—Scepticism of the new
generation.—Early boating
recollections.—Rafting.—George does the thing in
style.—The old boatman, his method.—So calm, so full
of peace.—The beginner.—Punting.—A sad
accident.—Pleasures of friendship.—Sailing, my first
experience.—Possible reason why we were not drowned.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p243b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatleft' alt= "Woman at housework" title= "Woman at housework" src="images/p243s.jpg" /></SPAN>We woke late the next morning, and, at Harris’s earnest
desire, partook of a plain breakfast, with “non
dainties.” Then we cleaned up, and put everything
straight (a continual labour, which was beginning to afford me a
pretty clear insight into a question that had often posed
me—namely, how a woman with the work of only one house on
her hands manages to pass away her time), and, at about ten, set
out on what we had determined should be a good day’s
journey.</p>
<p>We agreed that we would pull this morning, as a change from
towing; and Harris thought the best arrangement would be that
George and I should scull, and he steer. I did not chime in
with this idea at all; I said I thought Harris would have been
showing a more proper spirit if he had suggested that he and
George should work, and let me rest a bit. It seemed to me
that I was doing more than my fair share of the work on this
trip, and I was beginning to feel strongly on the subject.</p>
<p>It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I
should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I
like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for
hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of
it nearly breaks my heart.</p>
<p>You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has
almost 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 shall
have to throw out a wing soon.</p>
<p>And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work
that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and
years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a
great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust
it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation
than I do.</p>
<p>But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I
do not ask for more than my proper share.</p>
<p>But I get it without asking for it—at least, so it
appears to me—and this worries me.</p>
<p>George says he does not think I need trouble myself on the
subject. He thinks it is only my over-scrupulous nature
that makes me fear I am having more than my due; and that, as a
matter of fact, I don’t have half as much as I ought.
But I expect he only says this to comfort me.</p>
<p>In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of
each member of the crew that he is doing everything.
Harris’s notion was, that it was he alone who had been
working, and that both George and I had been imposing upon
him. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of
Harris’s having done anything more than eat and sleep, and
had a cast-iron opinion that it was he—George
himself—who had done all the labour worth speaking of.</p>
<p>He said he had never been out with such a couple of lazily
skulks as Harris and I.</p>
<p>That amused Harris.</p>
<p>“Fancy old George talking about work!” he laughed;
“why, about half-an-hour of it would kill him. Have
you ever seen George work?” he added, turning to me.</p>
<p>I agreed with Harris that I never had—most certainly not
since we had started on this trip.</p>
<p>“Well, I don’t see how <i>you</i> can know much
about it, one way or the other,” George retorted on Harris;
“for I’m blest if you haven’t been asleep half
the time. Have you ever seen Harris fully awake, except at
meal-time?” asked George, addressing me.</p>
<p>Truth compelled me to support George. Harris had been
very little good in the boat, so far as helping was concerned,
from the beginning.</p>
<p>“Well, hang it all, I’ve done more than old J.,
anyhow,” rejoined Harris.</p>
<p>“Well, you couldn’t very well have done
less,” added George.</p>
<p>“I suppose J. thinks he is the passenger,”
continued Harris.</p>
<p>And that was their gratitude to me for having brought them and
their wretched old boat all the way up from Kingston, and for
having superintended and managed everything for them, and taken
care of them, and slaved for them. It is the way of the
world.</p>
<p>We settled the present difficulty by arranging that Harris and
George should scull up past Reading, and that I should tow the
boat on from there. Pulling a heavy boat against a strong
stream has few attractions for me now. There was a time,
long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard work: now I like to
give the youngsters a chance.</p>
<p>I notice that most of the old river hands are similarly
retiring, whenever there is any stiff pulling to be done.
You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he
stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the
boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about
the marvellous feats he performed last season.</p>
<p>“Call what you’re doing hard work!” he
drawls, between his contented whiffs, addressing the two
perspiring novices, who have been grinding away steadily up
stream for the last hour and a half; “why, Jim Biffles and
Jack and I, last season, pulled up from Marlow to Goring in one
afternoon—never stopped once. Do you remember that,
Jack?”</p>
<p>Jack, who has made himself a bed up in the prow of all the
rugs and coats he can collect, and who has been lying there
asleep for the last two hours, partially wakes up on being thus
appealed to, and recollects all about the matter, and also
remembers that there was an unusually strong stream against them
all the way—likewise a stiff wind.</p>
<p>“About thirty-four miles, I suppose, it must have
been,” adds the first speaker, reaching down another
cushion to put under his head.</p>
<p>“No—no; don’t exaggerate, Tom,”
murmurs Jack, reprovingly; “thirty-three at the
outside.”</p>
<p>And Jack and Tom, quite exhausted by this conversational
effort, drop off to sleep once more. And the two
simple-minded youngsters at the sculls feel quite proud of being
allowed to row such wonderful oarsmen as Jack and Tom, and strain
away harder than ever.</p>
<p>When I was a young man, I used to listen to these tales from
my elders, and take them in, and swallow them, and digest every
word of them, and then come up for more; but the new generation
do 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 him
with the customary stretchers about the wonderful things we had
done all the way up.</p>
<p>We gave him all the regular ones—the time-honoured lies
that have done duty up the river with every boating-man for years
past—and added seven entirely original ones that we had
invented for ourselves, including a really quite likely story,
founded, to a certain extent, on an all but true episode, which
had actually happened in a modified degree some years ago to
friends of ours—a story that a mere child could have
believed without injuring itself, much.</p>
<p>And that young man mocked at them all, and wanted us to repeat
the feats then and there, and to bet us ten to one that we
didn’t.</p>
<p>We got to chatting about our rowing experiences this morning,
and to recounting stories of our first efforts in the art of
oarsmanship. My own earliest boating recollection is of
five of us contributing threepence each and taking out a
curiously constructed craft on the Regent’s Park lake,
drying ourselves subsequently, in the park-keeper’s
lodge.</p>
<p>After that, having acquired a taste for the water, I did a
good deal of rafting in various suburban brickfields—an
exercise providing more interest and excitement than might be
imagined, especially when you are in the middle of the pond and
the proprietor of the materials of which the raft is constructed
suddenly appears on the bank, with a big stick in his hand.</p>
<p>Your first sensation on seeing this gentleman is that, somehow
or other, you don’t feel equal to company and conversation,
and that, if you could do so without appearing rude, you would
rather avoid meeting him; and your object is, therefore, to get
off on the opposite side of the pond to which he is, and to go
home quietly and quickly, pretending not to see him. He, on
the contrary is yearning to take you by the hand, and talk to
you.</p>
<p>It appears that he knows your father, and is intimately
acquainted with yourself, but this does not draw you towards
him. He says he’ll teach you to take his boards and
make a raft of them; but, seeing that you know how to do this
pretty well already, the offer, though doubtless kindly meant,
seems a superfluous one on his part, and you are reluctant to put
him to any trouble by accepting it.</p>
<p>His anxiety to meet you, however, is proof against all your
coolness, and the energetic manner in which he dodges up and down
the pond so as to be on the spot to greet you when you land is
really quite flattering.</p>
<p>If he be of a stout and short-winded build, you can easily
avoid his advances; but, when he is of the youthful and
long-legged type, a meeting is inevitable. The interview
is, however, extremely brief, most of the conversation being on
his part, your remarks being mostly of an exclamatory and
mono-syllabic order, and as soon as you can tear yourself away
you do so.</p>
<p>I devoted some three months to rafting, and, being then as
proficient 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 the
Lea boating clubs.</p>
<p>Being out in a boat on the river Lea, especially on Saturday
afternoons, soon makes you smart at handling a craft, and spry at
escaping being run down by roughs or swamped by barges; and it
also affords plenty of opportunity for acquiring the most prompt
and graceful method of lying down flat at the bottom of the boat
so as to avoid being chucked out into the river by passing
tow-lines.</p>
<p>But it does not give you style. It was not till I came
to the Thames that I got style. My style of rowing is very
much admired now. People say it is so quaint.</p>
<p>George never went near the water until he was sixteen.
Then he and eight other gentlemen of about the same age went down
in a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat
there, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, a
shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice taken
out a boat on the Serpentine, told them it was jolly fun,
boating!</p>
<p>The tide was running out pretty rapidly when they reached the
landing-stage, and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the
river, but this did not trouble them at all, and they proceeded
to select their boat.</p>
<p>There was an eight-oared racing outrigger drawn up on the
stage; that was the one that took their fancy. They said
they’d have that one, please. The boatman was away,
and only his boy was in charge. The boy tried to damp their
ardour for the outrigger, and showed them two or three very
comfortable-looking boats of the family-party build, but those
would not do at all; the outrigger was the boat they thought they
would look best in.</p>
<p>So the boy launched it, and they took off their coats and
prepared to take their seats. The boy suggested that
George, who, even in those days, was always the heavy man of any
party, should be number four. George said he should be
happy to be number four, and promptly stepped into bow’s
place, and sat down with his back to the stern. They got
him into his proper position at last, and then the others
followed.</p>
<p>A particularly nervous boy was appointed cox, and the steering
principle explained to him by Joskins. Joskins himself took
stroke. He told the others that it was simple enough; all
they had to do was to follow him.</p>
<p>They said they were ready, and the boy on the landing stage
took a boat-hook and shoved him off.</p>
<p>What then followed George is unable to describe in
detail. He has a confused recollection of having,
immediately on starting, received a violent blow in the small of
the back from the butt-end of number five’s scull, at the
same time that his own seat seemed to disappear from under him by
magic, and leave him sitting on the boards. He also
noticed, as a curious circumstance, that number two was at the
same instant lying on his back at the bottom of the boat, with
his legs in the air, apparently in a fit.</p>
<p>They passed under Kew Bridge, broadside, at the rate of eight
miles an hour. Joskins being the only one who was rowing.
George, on recovering his seat, tried to help him, but, on
dipping his oar into the water, it immediately, to his intense
surprise, disappeared under the boat, and nearly took him with
it.</p>
<p>And then “cox” threw both rudder lines over-board,
and burst into tears.</p>
<p>How they got back George never knew, but it took them just
forty minutes. A dense crowd watched the entertainment from
Kew Bridge with much interest, and everybody shouted out to them
different directions. Three times they managed to get the
boat back through the arch, and three times they were carried
under it again, and every time “cox” looked up and
saw the bridge above him he broke out into renewed sobs.</p>
<p>George said he little thought that afternoon that he should
ever come to really like boating.</p>
<p>Harris is more accustomed to sea rowing than to river work,
and says that, as an exercise, he prefers it. I
don’t. I remember taking a small boat out at
Eastbourne last summer: I used to do a good deal of sea rowing
years ago, and I thought I should be all right; but I found I had
forgotten the art entirely. When one scull was deep down
underneath the water, the other would be flourishing wildly about
in the air. To get a grip of the water with both at the
same time I had to stand up. The parade was crowded with
nobility and gentry, and I had to pull past them in this
ridiculous fashion. I landed half-way down the beach, and
secured the services of an old boatman to take me back.</p>
<p>I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who has
been hired by the hour. There is something so beautifully
calm and restful about his method. It is so free from that
fretful haste, that vehement striving, that is every day becoming
more and more the bane of nineteenth-century life. He is
not for ever straining himself to pass all the other boats.
If another boat overtakes him and passes him it does not annoy
him; as a matter of fact, they all do overtake him and pass
him—all those that are going his way. This would
trouble and irritate some people; the sublime equanimity of the
hired boatman under the ordeal affords us a beautiful lesson
against ambition and uppishness.</p>
<p>Plain practical rowing of the get-the-boat-along order is not
a very difficult art to acquire, but it takes a good deal of
practice before a man feels comfortable, when rowing past
girls. It is the “time” that worries a
youngster. “It’s jolly funny,” he says,
as for the twentieth time within five minutes he disentangles his
sculls from yours; “I can get on all right when I’m
by myself!”</p>
<p>To see two novices try to keep time with one another is very
amusing. 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 he
has been endeavouring to do for the last ten minutes is to adapt
his method to bow’s limited capacity. Bow, in turn,
then becomes insulted, and requests stroke not to trouble his
head about him (bow), but to devote his mind to setting a
sensible stroke.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p255b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt= "Two novices in a boat" title= "Two novices in a boat" src="images/p255s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>“Or, shall <i>I</i> take stroke?” he adds, with
the evident idea that that would at once put the whole matter
right.</p>
<p>They splash along for another hundred yards with still
moderate success, and then the whole secret of their trouble
bursts upon stroke like a flash of inspiration.</p>
<p>“I tell you what it is: you’ve got my
sculls,” he cries, turning to bow; “pass yours
over.”</p>
<p>“Well, do you know, I’ve been wondering how it was
I couldn’t get on with these,” answers bow, quite
brightening up, and most willingly assisting in the
exchange. “<i>Now</i> we shall be all
right.”</p>
<p>But they are not—not even then. Stroke has to
stretch his arms nearly out of their sockets to reach his sculls
now; while bow’s pair, at each recovery, hit him a violent
blow in the chest. So they change back again, and come to
the conclusion that the man has given them the wrong set
altogether; and over their mutual abuse of this man they become
quite friendly and sympathetic.</p>
<p>George said he had often longed to take to punting for a
change. Punting is not as easy as it looks. As in
rowing, you soon learn how to get along and handle the craft, but
it takes long practice before you can do this with dignity and
without getting the water all up your sleeve.</p>
<p>One young man I knew had a very sad accident happen to him the
first time he went punting. He had been getting on so well
that he had grown quite cheeky over the business, and was walking
up and down the punt, working his pole with a careless grace that
was quite fascinating to watch. Up he would march to the
head of the punt, plant his pole, and then run along right to the
other end, just like an old punter. Oh! it was grand.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p257b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatright' alt= "Man and pole" title= "Man and pole" src="images/p257s.jpg" /></SPAN>And it would all have gone on being grand if he had not
unfortunately, while looking round to enjoy the scenery, taken
just one step more than there was any necessity for, and walked
off the punt altogether. The pole was firmly fixed in the
mud, and he was left clinging to it while the punt drifted
away. It was an undignified position for him. A rude
boy on the bank immediately yelled out to a lagging chum to
“hurry up and see real monkey on a stick.”</p>
<p>I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck would
have it, we had not taken the proper precaution to bring out a
spare pole with us. I could only sit and look at him.
His expression as the pole slowly sank with him I shall never
forget; there was so much thought in it.</p>
<p>I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw him
scramble out, sad and wet. I could not help laughing, he
looked such a ridiculous figure. I continued to chuckle to
myself about it for some time, and then it was suddenly forced in
upon me that really I had got very little to laugh at when I came
to think of it. Here was I, alone in a punt, without a
pole, drifting helplessly down mid-stream—possibly towards
a weir.</p>
<p>I began to feel very indignant with my friend for having
stepped overboard and gone off in that way. He might, at
all events, have left me the pole.</p>
<p>I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came in
sight of a fishing-punt moored in mid-stream, in which sat two
old fishermen. They saw me bearing down upon them, and they
called out to me to keep out of their way.</p>
<p>“I can’t,” I shouted back.</p>
<p>“But you don’t try,” they answered.</p>
<p>I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and they
caught me and lent me a pole. The weir was just fifty yards
below. I am glad they happened to be there.</p>
<p>The first time I went punting was in company with three other
fellows; they were going to show me how to do it. We could
not all start together, so I said I would go down first and get
out the punt, and then I could potter about and practice a bit
until they came.</p>
<p>I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were all
engaged; so I had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank,
watching the river, and waiting for my friends.</p>
<p>I had not been sitting there long before my attention became
attracted to a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise,
wore a jacket and cap exactly like mine. He was evidently a
novice at punting, and his performance was most
interesting. You never knew what was going to happen when
he 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 other
side of the pole. And with every result he seemed equally
surprised and annoyed.</p>
<p>The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in him
after a while, and to make bets with one another as to what would
be the outcome of his next push.</p>
<p>In the course of time my friends arrived on the opposite bank,
and they stopped and watched him too. His back was towards
them, and they only saw his jacket and cap. From this they
immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was I, their beloved
companion, who was making an exhibition of himself, and their
delight knew no bounds. They commenced to chaff him
unmercifully.</p>
<p>I did not grasp their mistake at first, and I thought,
“How rude of them to go on like that, with a perfect
stranger, too!” But before I could call out and
reprove them, the explanation of the matter occurred to me, and I
withdrew behind a tree.</p>
<p>Oh, how they enjoyed themselves, ridiculing that young
man! For five good minutes they stood there, shouting
ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him.
They peppered him with stale jokes, they even made a few new ones
and threw at him. They hurled at him all the private family
jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been perfectly
unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their
brutal jibes any longer, he turned round on them, and they saw
his face!</p>
<p>I was glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left in
them to look very foolish. They explained to him that they
had thought he was some one they knew. They said they hoped
he would not deem them capable of so insulting any one except a
personal friend of their own.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p261.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatright' alt= "Bathing" title= "Bathing" src="images/p261.jpg" /></SPAN>Of course their having mistaken him for a friend excused
it. I remember Harris telling me once of a bathing
experience he had at Boulogne. He was swimming about there
near the beach, when he felt himself suddenly seized by the neck
from behind, and forcibly plunged under water. He struggled
violently, but whoever had got hold of him seemed to be a perfect
Hercules in strength, and all his efforts to escape were
unavailing. He had given up kicking, and was trying to turn
his thoughts upon solemn things, when his captor released
him.</p>
<p>He regained his feet, and looked round for his would-be
murderer. The assassin was standing close by him, laughing
heartily, but the moment he caught sight of Harris’s face,
as it emerged from the water, he started back and seemed quite
concerned.</p>
<p>“I really beg your pardon,” he stammered
confusedly, “but I took you for a friend of
mine!”</p>
<p>Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistaken
him for a relation, or he would probably have been drowned
outright.</p>
<p>Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practice
too—though, as a boy, I did not think so. I had an
idea it came natural to a body, like rounders and touch. I
knew another boy who held this view likewise, and so, one windy
day, we thought we would try the sport. We were stopping
down at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up the
Yare. We hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge,
and started off.</p>
<p>“It’s rather a rough day,” said the man to
us, as we put off: “better take in a reef and luff sharp
when you get round the bend.”</p>
<p>We said we would make a point of it, and left him with a
cheery “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 we
had got it.</p>
<p>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 blowing
a perfect hurricane across it, we felt that the time had come to
commence operations.</p>
<p>Hector—I think that was his name—went on pulling
while I unrolled the sail. It seemed a complicated job, but
I accomplished it at length, and then came the question, which
was the top end?</p>
<p>By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventually
decided that the bottom was the top, and set to work to fix it
upside-down. But it was a long time before we could get it
up, either that way or any other way. The impression on the
mind of the sail seemed to be that we were playing at funerals,
and that I was the corpse and itself was the winding-sheet.</p>
<p>When it found that this was not the idea, it hit me over the
head with the boom, and refused to do anything.</p>
<p>“Wet it,” said Hector; “drop it over and get
it wet.”</p>
<p>He said people in ships always wetted the sails before they
put them up. So I wetted it; but that only made matters
worse than they were before. A dry sail clinging to your
legs and wrapping itself round your head is not pleasant, but,
when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.</p>
<p>We did get the thing up at last, the two of us together.
We fixed it, not exactly upside down—more sideways
like—and we tied it up to the mast with the painter, which
we cut off for the purpose.</p>
<p>That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact.
Why it did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. I
have often thought about the matter since, but I have never
succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory explanation of the
phenomenon.</p>
<p>Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural
obstinacy of all things in this world. The boat may
possibly have come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view
of our behaviour, that we had come out for a morning’s
suicide, and had thereupon determined to disappoint us.
That is the only suggestion I can offer.</p>
<p>By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed to
keep inside the boat, but it was exhausting work. Hector
said that pirates and other seafaring people generally lashed the
rudder to something or other, and hauled in the main top-jib,
during severe squalls, and thought we ought to try to do
something of the kind; but I was for letting her have her head to
the wind.</p>
<p>As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended by
adopting it, and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her
her head.</p>
<p>The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I have
never sailed at since, and don’t want to again. Then,
at a bend, she heeled over till half her sail was under
water. Then she righted herself by a miracle and flew for a
long low bank of soft mud.</p>
<p>That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way into
the middle of it and then stuck. Finding that we were once
more able to move according to our ideas, instead of being
pitched and thrown about like peas in a bladder, we crept
forward, and cut down the sail.</p>
<p>We had had enough sailing. We did not want to overdo the
thing and get a surfeit of it. We had had a sail—a
good all-round exciting, interesting sail—and now we
thought we would have a row, just for a change like.</p>
<p>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 we
proceeded with great caution, but they were a wretched old pair,
and the second one cracked almost easier than the first, and left
us helpless.</p>
<p>The mud stretched out for about a hundred yards in front of
us, and behind us was the water. The only thing to be done
was to sit and wait until someone came by.</p>
<p>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 was
an old fisherman who, with immense difficulty, at last rescued
us, and we were towed back in an ignominious fashion to the
boat-yard.</p>
<p>What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and
paying for the broken sculls, and for having been out four hours
and a half, it cost us a pretty considerable number of
weeks’ pocket-money, that sail. But we learned
experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.</p>
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