CHAPTER XV.


HOUSEHOLD DUTIES. - LOVE OF WORK. - THE OLD RIVER HAND, WHAT HE DOES AND
WHAT HE TELLS YOU HE HAS DONE. - SCEPTICISM OF THE NEW GENERATION. -
EARLY BOATING RECOLLECTIONS. - RAFTING. - GEORGE DOES THE THING IN STYLE.
- THE OLD BOATMAN, HIS METHOD. - SO CALM, SO FULL OF PEACE. - THE
BEGINNER. - PUNTING. - A SAD ACCIDENT. - PLEASURES OF FRIENDSHIP. -
SAILING, MY FIRST EXPERIENCE. - POSSIBLE REASON WHY WE WERE NOT DROWNED.

WE woke late the next morning, and, at Harris's earnest desire, partook
of a plain breakfast, with "non dainties." Then we cleaned up, and put
everything straight (a continual labour, which was beginning to afford me
a pretty clear insight into a question that had often posed me - namely,
how a woman with the work of only one house on her hands manages to pass
away her time), and, at about ten, set out on what we had determined
should be a good day's journey.

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. 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 and
irritate some people; the sublime equanimity of the hired boatman under
the ordeal affords us a beautiful lesson against ambition and uppishness.

Plain practical rowing of the get-the-boat-along order is not a very
difficult art to acquire, but it takes a good deal of practice before a
man feels comfortable, when rowing past girls. It is the "time" that
worries a youngster. "It's jolly funny," he says, as for the twentieth
time within five minutes he disentangles his sculls from yours; "I can
get on all right when I'm by myself!"

To see two novices try to keep time with one another is very amusing.
Bow finds it impossible to keep pace with stroke, because stroke rows in
such an extraordinary fashion. Stroke is intensely indignant at this,
and explains that what he has been endeavouring to do for the last ten
minutes is to adapt his method to bow's limited capacity. Bow, in turn,
then becomes insulted, and requests stroke not to trouble his head about
him (bow), but to devote his mind to setting a sensible stroke.

"Or, shall I take stroke?" he adds, with the evident idea that that would
at once put the whole matter right.

They splash along for another hundred yards with still moderate success,
and then the whole secret of their trouble bursts upon stroke like a
flash of inspiration.

"I tell you what it is: you've got my sculls," he cries, turning to bow;
"pass yours over."

"Well, do you know, I've been wondering how it was I couldn't get on with
these," answers bow, quite brightening up, and most willingly assisting
in the exchange. "NOW we shall be all right."

But they are not - not even then. Stroke has to stretch his arms nearly
out of their sockets to reach his sculls now; while bow's pair, at each
recovery, hit him a violent blow in the chest. So they change back
again, and come to the conclusion that the man has given them the wrong
set altogether; and over their mutual abuse of this man they become quite
friendly and sympathetic.

George said he had often longed to take to punting for a change. Punting
is not as easy as it looks. As in rowing, you soon learn how to get
along and handle the craft, but it takes long practice before you can do
this with dignity and without getting the water all up your sleeve.

One young man I knew had a very sad accident happen to him the first time
he went punting. He had been getting on so well that he had grown quite
cheeky over the business, and was walking up and down the punt, working
his pole with a careless grace that was quite fascinating to watch. Up
he would march to the head of the punt, plant his pole, and then run
along right to the other end, just like an old punter. Oh! it was grand.

And it would all have gone on being grand if he had not unfortunately,
while looking round to enjoy the scenery, taken just one step more than
there was any necessity for, and walked off the punt altogether. The
pole was firmly fixed in the mud, and he was left clinging to it while
the punt drifted away. It was an undignified position for him. A rude
boy on the bank immediately yelled out to a lagging chum to "hurry up and
see real monkey on a stick."

I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck would have it, we
had not taken the proper precaution to bring out a spare pole with us. I
could only sit and look at him. His expression as the pole slowly sank
with him I shall never forget; there was so much thought in it.

I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw him scramble out,
sad and wet. I could not help laughing, he looked such a ridiculous
figure. I continued to chuckle to myself about it for some time, and
then it was suddenly forced in upon me that really I had got very little
to laugh at when I came to think of it. Here was I, alone in a punt,
without a pole, drifting helplessly down mid-stream - possibly towards a
weir.

I began to feel very indignant with my friend for having stepped
overboard and gone off in that way. He might, at all events, have left
me the pole.

I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came in sight of a
fishing-punt moored in mid-stream, in which sat two old fishermen. They
saw me bearing down upon them, and they called out to me to keep out of
their way.

"I can't," I shouted back.

"But you don't try," they answered.

I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and they caught me and
lent me a pole. The weir was just fifty yards below. I am glad they
happened to be there.

The first time I went punting was in company with three other fellows;
they were going to show me how to do it. We could not all start
together, so I said I would go down first and get out the punt, and then
I could potter about and practice a bit until they came.

I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were all engaged; so I
had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank, watching the river,
and waiting for my friends.

I had not been sitting there long before my attention became attracted to
a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise, wore a jacket and cap
exactly like mine. He was evidently a novice at punting, and his
performance was most interesting. You never knew what was going to
happen when he put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself.
Sometimes he shot up stream and sometimes he shot down stream, and at
other times he simply spun round and came up the other side of the pole.
And with every result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed.

The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in him after a
while, and to make bets with one another as to what would be the outcome
of his next push.

In the course of time my friends arrived on the opposite bank, and they
stopped and watched him too. His back was towards them, and they only
saw his jacket and cap. From this they immediately jumped to the
conclusion that it was I, their beloved companion, who was making an
exhibition of himself, and their delight knew no bounds. They commenced
to chaff him unmercifully.

I did not grasp their mistake at first, and I thought, "How rude of them
to go on like that, with a perfect stranger, too!" But before I could
call out and reprove them, the explanation of the matter occurred to me,
and I withdrew behind a tree.

Oh, how they enjoyed themselves, ridiculing that young man! For five
good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him,
mocking him, jeering at him. They peppered him with stale jokes, they
even made a few new ones and threw at him. They hurled at him all the
private family jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been
perfectly unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their brutal
jibes any longer, he turned round on them, and they saw his face!

I was glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left in them to
look very foolish. They explained to him that they had thought he was
some one they knew. They said they hoped he would not deem them capable
of so insulting any one except a personal friend of their own.

Of course their having mistaken him for a friend excused it. I remember
Harris telling me once of a bathing experience he had at Boulogne. He
was swimming about there near the beach, when he felt himself suddenly
seized by the neck from behind, and forcibly plunged under water. He
struggled violently, but whoever had got hold of him seemed to be a
perfect Hercules in strength, and all his efforts to escape were
unavailing. He had given up kicking, and was trying to turn his thoughts
upon solemn things, when his captor released him.

He regained his feet, and looked round for his would-be murderer. The
assassin was standing close by him, laughing heartily, but the moment he
caught sight of Harris's face, as it emerged from the water, he started
back and seemed quite concerned.

"I really beg your pardon," he stammered confusedly, "but I took you for
a friend of mine!"

Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistaken him for a
relation, or he would probably have been drowned outright.

Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practice too - though, as a
boy, I did not think so. I had an idea it came natural to a body, like
rounders and touch. I knew another boy who held this view likewise, and
so, one windy day, we thought we would try the sport. We were stopping
down at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up the Yare. We
hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge, and started off. "It's
rather a rough day," said the man to us, as we put off: "better take in a
reef and luff sharp when you get round the bend."

We said we would make a point of it, and left him with a cheery "Good-
morning," wondering to ourselves how you "luffed," and where we were to
get a "reef" from, and what we were to do with it when we had got it.

We rowed until we were out of sight of the town, and then, with a wide
stretch of water in front of us, and the wind blowing a perfect hurricane
across it, we felt that the time had come to commence operations.

Hector - I think that was his name - went on pulling while I unrolled the
sail. It seemed a complicated job, but I accomplished it at length, and
then came the question, which was the top end?

By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventually decided that the
bottom was the top, and set to work to fix it upside-down. But it was a
long time before we could get it up, either that way or any other way.
The impression on the mind of the sail seemed to be that we were playing
at funerals, and that I was the corpse and itself was the winding-sheet.

When it found that this was not the idea, it hit me over the head with
the boom, and refused to do anything.

"Wet it," said Hector; "drop it over and get it wet."

He said people in ships always wetted the sails before they put them up.
So I wetted it; but that only made matters worse than they were before.
A dry sail clinging to your legs and wrapping itself round your head is
not pleasant, but, when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.

We did get the thing up at last, the two of us together. We fixed it,
not exactly upside down - more sideways like - and we tied it up to the
mast with the painter, which we cut off for the purpose.

That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not
upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the
matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory
explanation of the phenomenon.

Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy
of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the
conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had
come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to
disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.

By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed to keep
inside the boat, but it was exhausting work. Hector said that pirates
and other seafaring people generally lashed the rudder to something or
other, and hauled in the main top-jib, during severe squalls, and thought
we ought to try to do something of the kind; but I was for letting her
have her head to the wind.

As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended by adopting it,
and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her her head.

The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I have never
sailed at since, and don't want to again. Then, at a bend, she heeled
over till half her sail was under water. Then she righted herself by a
miracle and flew for a long low bank of soft mud.

That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way into the middle of it
and then stuck. Finding that we were once more able to move according to
our ideas, instead of being pitched and thrown about like peas in a
bladder, we crept forward, and cut down the sail.

We had had enough sailing. We did not want to overdo the thing and get a
surfeit of it. We had had a sail - a good all-round exciting,
interesting sail - and now we thought we would have a row, just for a
change like.

We took the sculls and tried to push the boat off the mud, and, in doing
so, we broke one of the sculls. After that we proceeded with great
caution, but they were a wretched old pair, and the second one cracked
almost easier than the first, and left us helpless.

The mud stretched out for about a hundred yards in front of us, and
behind us was the water. The only thing to be done was to sit and wait
until someone came by.

It was not the sort of day to attract people out on the river, and it was
three hours before a soul came in sight. It was an old fisherman who,
with immense difficulty, at last rescued us, and we were towed back in an
ignominious fashion to the boat-yard.

What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and paying for the
broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half, it cost us
a pretty considerable number of weeks' pocket-money, that sail. But we
learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.