Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog)
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. Joskins being the only one who was rowing. George, on recovering
his seat, tried to help him, but, on dipping his oar into the water, it
immediately, to his intense surprise, disappeared under the boat, and
nearly took him with it.
And then “cox” threw both rudder lines over-board, and burst into tears.
How they got back George never knew, but it took them just forty
minutes. A dense crowd watched the entertainment from Kew Bridge with
much interest, and everybody shouted out to them different directions.
Three times they managed to get the boat back through the arch, and
three times they were carried under it again, and every time “cox”
looked up and saw the bridge above him he broke out into renewed sobs.
George said he little thought that afternoon that he should ever come
to really like boating.
Harris is more accustomed to sea rowing than to river work, and says
that, as an exercise, he prefers it. I don’t. I remember taking a small
boat out at Eastbourne last summer: I used to do a good deal of sea
rowing years ago, and I thought I should be all right; but I found I
had forgotten the art entirely. When one scull was deep down underneath
the water, the other would be flourishing wildly about in the air. To
get a grip of the water with both at the same time I had to stand up.
The parade was crowded with nobility and gentry, and I had to pull past
them in this ridiculous fashion. I landed half-way down the beach, and
secured the services of an old boatman to take me back.
I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who has been
hired by the hour. There is something so beautifully calm and restful
about his method. It is so free from that fretful haste, that
vehement striving, that is every day becoming more and more the bane
of nineteenth-century life. He is not for ever straining himself to
pass all the other boats. If another boat overtakes him and passes
him it does not annoy him; as a matter of fact, they all do overtake
him and pass him—all those that are going his way. This would trouble