Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog)
I agreed with George, and suggested that we should seek out some
retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream
away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes—some half-forgotten nook,
hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world—some
quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging
waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and faint.
Harris said he thought it would be humpy. He said he knew the sort of
place I meant; where everybody went to bed at eight o’clock, and you
couldn’t get a _Referee_ for love or money, and had to walk ten miles
to get your baccy.
“No,” said Harris, “if you want rest and change, you can’t beat a sea
trip.”
I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does you good 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 that you
are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on
shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you
were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all
rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn’t come. On Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able
to swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with
a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now.
On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on
Monday morning, as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand
by the gunwale, waiting to step 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 from London to Liverpool;
and when he got to Liverpool, the only thing he was anxious about was
to sell that return ticket.
It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so I am told;
and was eventually sold for eighteenpence to a bilious-looking youth
who had just been advised by his medical men to go to the sea-side, and
take exercise.
“Sea-side!” said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket affectionately
into his hand; “why, you’ll have enough to last you a lifetime; and as
for exercise! why, you’ll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship,
than you would turning somersaults on dry land.”
He himself—my brother-in-law—came back by train. He said the
North-Western Railway was healthy enough for him.
Another fellow I knew went for a week’s voyage round the coast, and,
before they started, the steward came to him to ask whether he would
pay for each meal as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole
series.
The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come so much
cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole week at two pounds
five. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill.
Lunch was at one, and consisted of four courses. Dinner at six—soup,
fish, entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert. And a
light meat supper at ten.
My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job (he is a
hearty eater), and did so.
Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. He didn’t feel so hungry
as he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of boiled
beef, and some strawberries and cream. He pondered a good deal during
the afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating
nothing but boiled beef for weeks, and at other times it seemed that he
must have been living on strawberries and cream for 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. The announcement
aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of
that two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and
things and went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham, mingled
with fried fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the ladder;
and then the steward came up with an oily smile, and said:
“What can I get you, sir?”
[Picture: Man feeling ill] “Get me out of this,” was the feeble reply.
And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over to leeward, and
left him.
For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin
captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the
captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went
in for weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on
chicken broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away from
the landing-stage he gazed 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 he could have
put it straight.
So I set my face against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, upon my
own account. I was never queer. But I was afraid for George. George
said he should be all right, and would rather like it, but he would
advise Harris and me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should
both be ill. Harris said that, to himself, it was always a mystery how
people managed to get sick at sea—said he thought people must do it on
purpose, from affectation—said he had often wished to be, but had never
been able.
Then he told us anecdotes of how he had gone across the Channel when it
was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their berths, and
he and the captain were the only two living souls on board who were not
ill. Sometimes it was he and the second mate who were not ill; but it
was generally he and one other man. If not he and another man, then it
was he by himself.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick—on land. At sea, you
come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them;
but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it
was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors
that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a
mystery.
If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I
could account for the seeming enigma easily enough. It was just off
Southend Pier, I recollect, and he was leaning out through one of the
port-holes in a very dangerous position. I went up to him to try and
save him.
“Hi! come further in,” I said, shaking him by the shoulder. “You’ll be
overboard.”
“Oh my! I wish I was,” was the only answer I could get; and there I had
to leave him.
Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee-room of a Bath hotel,
talking about his voyages, and explaining, with enthusiasm, how he
loved the sea.
“Good sailor!” he replied in answer to a mild young man’s envious
query; “well, I did feel a little queer _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 one day, and wanted to be
thrown overboard?”
“Southend Pier!” he replied, with a puzzled expression.
“Yes; going down to Yarmouth, last Friday three weeks.”
“Oh, ah—yes,” he answered, brightening up; “I remember now. I did have
a headache that afternoon. It was the pickles, you know. They were the
most disgraceful pickles I ever tasted in a respectable boat. Did _you_
have any?”
For myself, I have discovered an excellent preventive against
sea-sickness, in balancing myself. You stand in the centre of the deck,
and, as the ship heaves and pitches, you move your body about, so as
to keep it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean
forward, till the deck almost touches your nose; and when its back end
gets up, you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two;
but you 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; the constant
change of scene would occupy our minds (including what there was of
Harris’s); and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us
sleep well.
Harris said he didn’t think George ought to do anything that would
have a tendency to make him sleepier than he always was, as it might
be dangerous. He said he didn’t very well understand how George was
going to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only
twenty-four hours in each day, summer and winter alike; but thought
that if he _did_ sleep any more, he might just as well be dead, and so
save his board 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 and cake _ad lib._, and is cheap at the price, if you
haven’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 both said it was a good
idea of George’s; and we said it in a tone that seemed to somehow imply
that we were surprised that George should have come out so sensible.
[Picture: Montmorency] The only one who was not struck with the
suggestion was Montmorency. He never did care for the river, did
Montmorency.
“It’s all very well for you fellows,” he says; “you like it, but _I_
don’t. There’s nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in my line, and I
don’t smoke. If I see a rat, you won’t stop; and if I go to sleep, you
get fooling about with the boat, and slop me overboard. If you ask me,
I call the 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, wet
nights.—Compromise decided on.—Montmorency, first impressions of.—Fears
lest he is too good for this world, fears subsequently dismissed as
groundless.—Meeting adjourns.
We pulled out the maps, and discussed plans.
We arranged to start on the following Saturday from Kingston. Harris
and I would go down in the morning, and take the boat up to Chertsey,
and George, who would not be able to get away from the City till the
afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day,
except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two),
would meet us there.
Should we “camp out” or sleep at inns?
George and I were for camping out. We said it would be so wild and
free, so patriarchal like.
Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the
cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have
ceased their song, and only the moorhen’s plaintive cry and the harsh
croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters,
where the dying day breathes out her last.
From the dim woods on either bank, Night’s ghostly army, the grey
shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering
rear-guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above
the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night,
upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening
world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in
stillness.
[Picture: River scene]
Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the tent is
pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten. Then the big pipes
are filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goes round in musical
undertone; while, in the pauses of our talk, the river, playing round
the boat, prattles strange old tales and secrets, sings low the old
child’s song that it has sung so many thousand years—will sing so many
thousand years to come, before its voice grows harsh and old—a song
that we, who have learnt to love its changing face, who have so often
nestled on its yielding bosom, think, somehow, we understand, though we