I bet they did not give that
boat another chance for a week.
I shall never forget the picture of those two men walking up and down the
bank with a tow-line, looking for their boat.
One sees a good many funny incidents up the river in connection with
towing. One of the most common is the sight of a couple of towers,
walking briskly along, deep in an animated discussion, while the man in
the boat, a hundred yards behind them, is vainly shrieking to them to
stop, and making frantic signs 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 rapidly
down stream.
He calls to them to stop, quite gently and politely at first.
"Hi! stop a minute, will you?" he shouts cheerily. "I've dropped my hat
over-board."
Then: "Hi! Tom - Dick! can't you hear?" not quite so affably this time.
Then: "Hi! Confound YOU, you dunder-headed idiots! Hi! stop! Oh you -
!"
After that he springs up, and dances about, and roars himself red in the
face, and curses everything he knows. And the small boys on the bank
stop and jeer at him, and pitch stones at him as he is pulled along past
them, at the rate of four miles an hour, and can't get out.
Much of this sort of trouble would be saved if those who are towing would
keep remembering that they are towing, and give a pretty frequent look
round to see how their man is getting on. It is best to let one person
tow. When two are doing it, they get chattering, and forget, and the
boat itself, offering, as it does, but little resistance, is of no real
service in reminding them of the fact.
As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can be to their
work, George told us, later on in the evening, when we were discussing
the subject after supper, of a very curious instance.
He and three other men, so he said, were sculling a very heavily laden
boat up from Maidenhead one evening, and a little above Cookham lock they
noticed a fellow and a girl, walking along the towpath, both deep in an
apparently interesting and absorbing conversation. They were carrying a
boat-hook between them, and, attached to the boat-hook was a tow-line,
which trailed behind them, its end in the water. No boat was near, no
boat was in sight. There must have been a boat attached to that tow-line
at some time or other, that was certain; but what had become of it, what
ghastly fate had overtaken it, and those who had been left in it, was
buried in mystery. Whatever the accident may have been, however, it had
in no way disturbed the young lady and gentleman, who were towing. They
had the boat-hook and they had the line, and that seemed to be all that
they thought necessary to their work.
George was about to call out and wake them up, but, at that moment, a
bright idea flashed across him, and he didn'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 hulking chaps and a
heavy boat up to Marlow.
George said he never saw so much thoughtful sadness concentrated into one
glance before, as when, at the lock, that young couple grasped the idea
that, for the last two miles, they had been towing the wrong boat.
George fancied that, if it had not been for the restraining influence of
the sweet woman at his side, the young man might have given way to
violent language.
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?" asked Harris.
George replied he did not know.
Another example of the dangerous want of sympathy between tower and towed
was witnessed by George and myself once up near Walton. It was where the
tow-path shelves gently down into the water, and we were camping on the
opposite bank, noticing things in general. By-and-by a small boat came
in sight, towed through the water at a tremendous pace by a powerful
barge horse, on which sat a very small boy. Scattered about the boat, in
dreamy and reposeful attitudes, lay five fellows, the man who was
steering having a particularly restful appearance.
"I should like to see him pull the wrong line," murmured George, as they
passed. And at that precise moment the man did it, and the boat rushed
up the bank with a noise like the ripping up of forty thousand linen
sheets. Two men, a hamper, and three oars immediately left the boat on
the larboard side, and reclined on the bank, and one and a half moments
afterwards, two other men disembarked from the starboard, and sat down
among boat-hooks and sails and carpet-bags and bottles. The last man
went on twenty yards further, and then got out on his head.
This seemed to sort of lighten the boat, and it went on much easier, the
small boy shouting at the top of his voice, and urging his steed into a
gallop. The fellows sat up and stared at one another. It was some
seconds before they realised what had happened to them, but, when they
did, they began to shout lustily for the boy to stop. He, however, was
too much occupied with the horse to hear them, and we watched them,
flying after him, until the distance hid them from view.
I cannot say I was sorry at their mishap. Indeed, I only wish that all
the young fools who have their boats towed in this fashion - and plenty
do - could meet with similar misfortunes. Besides the risk they run
themselves, they become a danger and an annoyance to every other boat
they pass. Going at the pace they do, it is impossible for them to get
out of anybody else's way, or for anybody else to get out of theirs.
Their line gets hitched across your mast, and overturns you, or it
catches somebody in the boat, and either throws them into the water, or
cuts their face open. The best plan is to stand your ground, and be
prepared to keep them off with the butt-end of a mast.
Of all experiences in connection with towing, the most exciting is being
towed by girls. It is a sensation that nobody ought to miss. It takes
three girls to tow always; two hold the rope, and the other one runs
round and round, and giggles. They generally begin by getting themselves
tied up. They get the line round their legs, and have to sit down on the
path and undo each other, and then they twist it round their necks, and
are nearly strangled. They fix it straight, however, at last, and start
off at a run, pulling the boat along at quite a dangerous pace. At the
end of a hundred yards they are naturally breathless, and suddenly stop,
and all sit down on the grass and laugh, and your boat drifts out to mid-
stream and turns round, before you know what has happened, or can get
hold of a scull. Then they stand up, and are surprised.
"Oh, look!" they say; "he's gone right out into the middle."
They pull on pretty steadily for a bit, after this, and then it all at
once occurs to one of them that she will pin up her frock, and they ease
up for the purpose, and the boat runs aground.
You jump up, and push it off, and you shout to them not to stop.
"Yes. What's the matter?" they shout back.
"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; "anything happened?"
" No," you reply, "it's all right; only go 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 boat moving."
"Oh, all right, I'll tell `em. Are we doing it all right?"
"Oh, yes, very nicely, indeed, only don't stop."
"It doesn't seem difficult at all. I thought it was so hard."
"Oh, no, it's simple enough. You want to keep on steady at it, that's
all."
"I see. Give me out my red shawl, it's under the cushion."
You find the shawl, and hand it out, and by this time another one has
come back and thinks she will have hers too, and they take Mary's on
chance, and Mary does not want it, so they bring it back and have a
pocket-comb instead. It is about twenty minutes before they get off
again, and, at the next corner, they see a cow, and you have to leave the
boat to chivy the cow out of their way.
There is never a dull moment in the boat while girls are towing it.
George got the line right after a while, and towed us steadily on to
Penton Hook. There we discussed the important question of camping. We
had decided to sleep on board that night, and we had either to lay up
just about there, or go on past Staines. It seemed early to think about
shutting up then, however, with the sun still in the heavens, and we
settled to push straight on for Runnymead, three and a half miles
further, a quiet wooded part of the river, and where there is good
shelter.
We all wished, however, afterward that we had stopped at Penton 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 long day. You take no interest in the
scenery during these last few miles. You do not chat and laugh. Every
half-mile you cover seems like two. You can hardly believe you are only
where you are, and you are convinced that the map must be wrong; and,
when you have trudged along for what seems to you at least ten miles, and
still the lock is not in sight, you begin to seriously fear that somebody
must have sneaked it, and run off with it.
I remember being terribly upset once up the river (in a figurative sense,
I mean). I was out with a young lady - cousin on my mother's side - and
we were pulling down to Goring. It was rather late, and we were anxious
to get in - at least SHE was anxious to get in. It was half-past six
when we reached Benson's lock, and dusk was drawing on, and she began to
get excited then. She said she must be in to supper. I said it was a
thing I felt I wanted to be in at, too; and I drew out a map I had with
me to see exactly how far it was. I saw it was just a mile and a half to
the next lock - Wallingford - and five on from there to Cleeve.
"Oh, it's all right!" I said. "We'll be through the next lock before
seven, and then there is only one more;" and I settled down and pulled
steadily away.
We passed the bridge, and soon after that I asked if she saw the lock.
She said no, she did not see any lock; and I said, "Oh!" and pulled on.
Another five minutes went by, and then I asked her to look again.
"No," she said; "I can't see any signs of a lock."
"You - you are sure you know a lock, when you do see one?" I asked
hesitatingly, not wishing to offend her.
The question did offend her, however, and she suggested that I had better
look for myself; so I laid down the sculls, and took a view. The river
stretched out straight before us in the twilight for about a mile; not a
ghost of a lock was to be seen.
"You don't think we have lost our way, do you?" 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 for the falls.
This idea did not comfort her in the least, and she began to cry. She
said we should both be drowned, and that it was a judgment on her for
coming out with me.
It seemed an excessive punishment, I thought;
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