Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog)
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.
[Picture: The dog] 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.”
[Picture: Rescuing 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.—There is a strangeness about Harris.—Harris and the swans, a
remarkable story.—Harris has a troubled night.
We caught a breeze, after lunch, which took us gently up past Wargrave
and Shiplake. Mellowed in the drowsy sunlight of a summer’s afternoon,
Wargrave, nestling where the river bends, makes a sweet old picture as
you pass it, and one that lingers long upon the retina of memory.
The “George and Dragon” at Wargrave boasts a sign, painted on the one
side by Leslie, R.A., and on the other by Hodgson of that ilk. Leslie
has depicted the fight; Hodgson has imagined the scene, “After the
Fight”—George, the work done, enjoying his pint of beer.
Day, the author of _Sandford and Merton_, lived and—more credit to the
place still—was killed at Wargrave. In the church is a memorial to Mrs.
Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter,
between two boys and two girls who “have never been undutiful to their
parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths,
to steal, or to break windows.” Fancy giving up all that for five
shillings a year! It is not worth it.
It is rumoured in the town that once, many years ago, a boy appeared
who really never had done these things—or at all events, which was all
that was required or could be expected, had never been known to do
them—and thus won the crown of glory. He was exhibited for three weeks
afterwards in the Town Hall, under a glass case.
What has become of the money since no one knows. They say it is always