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.
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.
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.
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.
But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for
more than my proper share.
But I get it without asking for it - at least, so it appears to me - and
this worries me.
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.
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.
He said he had never been out with such a couple of lazily skulks 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. Have you ever seen George work?" he added,
turning to me.
I agreed with Harris that I never had - most certainly not since we had
started on this trip.
"Well, I don't see how YOU 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.
Truth compelled me to support George. Harris had been very 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 done less," added George.
"I suppose J. thinks he is the passenger," continued Harris.
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
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.
"About thirty-four miles, I suppose, it must have been," adds the first
speaker, reaching down another cushion to put under his head.
" No - no; don't exaggerate, Tom," murmurs Jack, reprovingly; "thirty-
three at the outside."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
They said they were ready, and the boy on the landing stage took a boat-
hook and shoved him off.
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.
They passed under Kew Bridge, broadside, at the rate of eight miles an
hour.
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