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 a house-boat?"
On our informing him it was a double-sculling skiff, he seemed surprised.
We had a good deal of trouble with steam launches that morning. It was
just before the Henley week, and they were going up in large numbers;
some by themselves, some towing houseboats. I do hate steam launches: I
suppose every rowing man does. I never see a steam launch but I feel I
should 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 has the knack
of rousing every evil instinct in my nature, and I yearn for the good old
days, when you could go about and tell people what you thought of them
with a hatchet and a bow and arrows. The expression on the face of the
man who, with his hands in his pockets, stands by the stern, smoking a
cigar, is sufficient to excuse a breach of the peace by itself; and the
lordly whistle for you to get out of the way would, I am confident,
ensure a verdict of "justifiable homicide" from any jury of river men.
They used to HAVE to whistle for us to get out of their way. If I may do
so, without appearing boastful, I think I can honestly say that our one
small boat, during that week, caused more annoyance and delay and
aggravation to the steam launches that we came across than all the other
craft on the river 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 the lines, and Harris and George would sit down beside
me, all of us with our backs to the launch, and the boat would drift out
quietly into mid-stream.
On would come the launch, whistling, and on we would go, drifting. At
about a hundred yards off, she would start whistling like mad, and the
people would come and lean over the side, and roar at us; but we never
heard them! Harris would be telling us an anecdote about his mother, and
George and I would not have missed a word of it for worlds.
Then that launch would give one final shriek of a whistle that would
nearly burst the boiler, and she would reverse her engines, and blow off
steam, and swing round and get aground; everyone on board of it would
rush to the bow and yell at us, and the people on the bank would stand
and shout to us, and all the other passing boats would stop and join in,
till the whole river for miles up and down was in a state of frantic
commotion. And then Harris would break off in the most interesting part
of his narrative, and look up with mild surprise, and say to George:
"Why, George, bless me, if here isn't a steam launch!"
And George would answer:
"Well, do you know, I THOUGHT I heard something!"
Upon which we would get nervous and confused, and not know how to get the
boat out of the way, and the people in the launch would crowd round and
instruct us:
"Pull your right - you, you idiot! back with your left. No, not YOU -
the other one - leave the 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 out of their way, so that
they could go on; and we would thank them so much, and ask them to give
us a tow. But they never would.
Another good way we discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of
steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and ask them if they
were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the Bermondsey Good Templars, and could they
lend us a saucepan.
Old ladies, not accustomed to the river, are always intensely nervous of
steam launches. I remember going up once from Staines to Windsor - a
stretch of water peculiarly rich in these mechanical monstrosities - with
a party containing three ladies of this description. It was very
exciting. At the first glimpse of every steam launch that came in view,
they insisted on landing and sitting down on the bank until it was out of
sight again. They said they were very sorry, but that they owed it to
their families not to be fool-hardy.
We found ourselves short of water at Hambledon Lock; so we took our jar
and went up to the lock-keeper's house to beg for some.
George was our spokesman. He put on a winning smile, and said:
"Oh, please could you spare us a little water?"
"Certainly," replied the old gentleman; "take as much as you want, and
leave the rest."
"Thank you so much," murmured George, looking about him. "Where - where
do you keep it?"
"It's always in the same place my boy," was the stolid reply: "just
behind you."
"I don't see it," said George, turning round.
"Why, bless us, where's your eyes?" was the man's comment, as he twisted
George round and pointed up and down the stream. "There's enough of it
to see, 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," replied the old fellow. "It's what
I've drunk for the last fifteen years."
George told him that his appearance, after the course, did not seem a
sufficiently good advertisement for the brand; and that he would prefer
it out of a pump.
We got some from a cottage a little higher up. I daresay THAT was only
river water, if we had known. But we did not know, so it was all right.
What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over.
We tried river water once, later on in the season, but it was not a
success. We were coming down stream, and had pulled up to have tea in a
backwater near Windsor. Our jar was empty, and it was a case of going
without our tea or taking water from the river. Harris was for chancing
it. He said it must be all right if we boiled the water. He said that
the various germs of poison present in the water would be killed by the
boiling. So we filled our kettle with Thames backwater, and boiled it;
and very careful we were to see that it did boil.
We had made the tea, and were just settling down comfortably to 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 towards us on the
sluggish current, a dog. It was one of the quietest and peacefullest
dogs I have ever seen. I never met a dog who seemed more contented -
more easy in its mind. It was floating dreamily on its back, with its
four legs stuck up straight into the air. It was what I should call a
full-bodied dog, with a well-developed chest. On he came, serene,
dignified, and calm, until he was abreast of our boat, and there, among
the rushes, he eased up, and settled down cosily for the evening.
George said he didn't want any tea, and emptied his cup into the water.
Harris did not feel thirsty, either, and followed suit. I had drunk half
mine, but I wished I had not.
I asked George if he thought I was likely to have typhoid.
He said: "Oh, no;" he thought I had a very good chance indeed of escaping
it. Anyhow, I should know in about 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 Marsh Lock, and is well worth
taking, being a pretty, shady little piece of stream, besides saving
nearly half a mile of distance.
Of course, its entrance is studded with posts and chains, and surrounded
with notice boards, menacing all kinds of torture, imprisonment, and
death to everyone who dares set scull upon its waters - I wonder some of
these riparian boors don't claim the air of the river and threaten
everyone with forty shillings fine who breathes it - but the posts and
chains a little 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 was during this
lunch that George and I received rather a trying shock.
Harris received a shock, too; but I do not think Harris's shock could
have been anything like so bad as the shock 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 just settled down comfortably to feed.
Harris had the beefsteak pie between his knees, and was carving it, and
George and I were waiting 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 turned round to
reach one out. We were not five seconds getting it. When we looked
round again, Harris and the pie were gone!
It was a wide, open field. There was not a tree or a bit of hedge for
hundreds of yards. He could not have tumbled into the river, because we
were on the water side of him, and he would have had to climb over us to
do it.
George and I gazed all about. Then we gazed at each other.
"Has he been snatched up to heaven?" I queried.
"They'd hardly have taken the pie too," said George.
There seemed weight in this objection, and we discarded the heavenly
theory.
"I suppose the truth of the matter is," suggested George, 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 spot where 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, we saw Harris's head - and
nothing but his head - sticking bolt upright among the tall grass, the
face very red, and bearing upon it an expression of great indignation!
George was the first to recover.
"Speak!" he cried, "and tell us whether you are alive or dead - and where
is the rest of you?"
"Oh, don't be a stupid ass!" said Harris's head. "I believe you did it
on purpose."
"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, rose the 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 of a small
gully, the long grass hiding it from view; and in leaning a little back
he had shot over, pie and all.
He said he had never felt so surprised in all his life, as when he first
felt himself going, without being able to conjecture in the slightest
what had happened. He thought at first that the end of the world had
come.
Harris believes to this day that George and I planned it all beforehand.
Thus does unjust suspicion follow even the most blameless for, as the
poet says, "Who shall escape calumny?"
Who, indeed!
CHAPTER XIV.
WARGRAVE. - WAXWORKS. - SONNING. - OUR STEW. - MONTMORENCY IS SARCASTIC.
- FIGHT BETWEEN MONTMORENCY AND THE TEA-KETTLE. - GEORGE'S BANJO STUDIES.
- MEET WITH DISCOURAGEMENT. - DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF THE MUSICAL
AMATEUR. - LEARNING TO PLAY THE BAGPIPES. - HARRIS FEELS SAD AFTER
SUPPER. - GEORGE AND I GO FOR A WALK. - RETURN HUNGRY AND WET.
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