For every afternoon of those beautiful June and July days we rowed for
two hours, from five to seven. Our studies were not relaxed in the
morning, and our hours for swimming were regularly enjoyed, but the
absorbing topic of thought and conversation was the approaching
boat-race. Twice on Saturday afternoons we had seen Captain Mugford and
Mr Clare pulling in their boat. They did not condescend to practise
oftener, but we noticed that they worked in earnest when they did row.
With the confidence of youth we feared not, feeling sanguine that we
must beat them.
There was a vein of discord, however, in our little colony. Alfred
Higginson and my brother Drake, who only differed by a few months in
age, in other respects differed greatly, and had never been able, since
our first acquaintance, to get along together. Alfred Higginson was of
a nervous, sensitive disposition, quick in temper, and easily provoked.
His tastes were fastidious. He was an excellent scholar, (much better
than my brother Drake), and very fond of reading. He entered fully into
all our sports, but preferred fishing, sailing, and swimming to our
rougher harder amusements. He drew excellently, landscape and marine
views and figures. He was a healthy, active boy, and could beat us all
in running. I have said his was a quick temper, but it was a forgiving
one. If he laughed not as loud and often as many of us, he caused us to
laugh oftener than any, for he had a quick dry humour and witty tongue.
When it came to chaffing, he was always conqueror.
My brother Drake was entirely unlike Alfred Higginson. He was a hardy,
rough, jolly boy, overflowing with fun and animal life, what is called a
"regular boy." Never quiet--laughing, singing, whistling all the time,
heels over head in everything, pitching into his studies as
irrepressibly as into his games, but with more success in the latter,
though he was a fair student; better in his mathematics and other
English studies than in the languages. The only reading he cared for
was that of travel and adventure, voyages of whalemen and discoveries,
histories of pirates, Indian scenes, hunting stories, war histories,
Walter Scott's novels, "Gulliver's Travels," and the unequalled
"Robinson Crusoe." Everything he could find about the Crusaders he
revelled in, and even went at Latin with a rush when, Caesar and Nepos
being put aside, the dramatic narrative of Virgil opened to him, and the
adventures of the Trojan heroes became his daily lesson. But that he
had to feed his interest, crumb by crumb, painfully gathered by
dictionary and grammar, made him chafe. He enjoyed it, though, with all
of us, when, after each day's recitation--after we boys had marred and
blurred the elegance and spirit of Virgil's eloquence with all sorts of
laboured, limping translations, that made Mr Clare fairly writhe in his
chair--our tutor would drop a word of commendation for Walter's better
rendering of the poem, and then read the lesson himself, and go over in
advance the one for the next day. Then the ribs and decks of our
schoolroom in the wrecked brig melted away as the scenes of the Aeneid
surrounded us. The dash of the waves we heard was on the Trojan shore,
or the coast of Latium, as we wandered with storm-tossed Aeneas. Or we
walked the splendid court of Dido, or were contending in battle with the
warlike Turnus for our settlement in Latium. Turnus and the fierce
Mezentius were Drake's favourites. He never liked Aeneas, who was
always Alfred Higginson's hero. Those readings were often disturbed by
Drake's exclamations. His overflowing, outspoken disposition could not
be restrained when his interest was powerfully enlisted; and as Mr
Clare read, in his clear, impassioned manner, some exciting passage,
Drake would shout out an exclamation of encouragement or satisfaction
with a favourite warrior, and bring down his fist on the desk, as
another favourite was discomfited or came to grief. I remember very
well how often Drake was reproved for such unseasonable enthusiasm,
which always caused an after sarcasm or witticism from Alfred Higginson;
and I distinctly recall how, notwithstanding the formality of
school-hours, when we came to the single combat between Aeneas and
Turnus, and the death of the latter, Drake flung his book from the
table, and shouted out in an angry voice, "I'll bet anything Virgil
tells fibs!"
Those readings were treats to all of us. Drake having told Captain
Mugford of them, and discussed the incidents that vexed him with the
Captain, got him so interested that he asked Mr Clare to allow him to
come in at the close of our recitations. Of course that favour was
readily granted, and after that time the Captain always made one of the
auditors. He used to laugh and shake over Drake's excitement, and yet
entered into it himself, and I have seen salt drops running down his
cheeks and Mr Clare's, as the latter rendered in a voice slightly
trembling some of the pathetic passages in which Virgil is so
exquisitely beautiful.
I am glad to write of those lessons in the old brig's carcass, for they
are remembered so pleasantly. Moreover, it came naturally in drawing my
dear brother Drake's character, and the effect of those heroical
classics influenced, in a manner very quixotic, the crisis of the
continued quarrel between Drake and Alfred Higginson, to which we are
coming. The great dissimilarity in the characters of the two was a
reason for their want of sympathy and agreement, one with the other, but
the causes of the open warfare which existed between them were the
faults of each--the irritability, slight conceit, and stinging tongue of
Alfred Higginson; the teasing practices, want of toleration for the
feelings and peculiarities of others, and a certain recklessness of
Drake's. And yet they were both noble boys, with nothing false or
ungenerous or underhanded about either of them.
Ever since we had come to the cape, their skirmishes of words and
disagreement had been continual, and several more tangible collisions,
where blows had been exchanged between them, were nipped in the bud by
Walter and the others of us, and once by the Captain, who, wrought up by
their quarrelsomeness, separated them pretty fiercely, and, holding each
at arm's length, told them that, if there was any fighting to be done
among his crew, he must have a hand in it. Then he laughed one of his
bars of rollicking "ha-has," and dropped the boys with the injunction
that if they had another "mill," he should certainly let their fathers
know. "Now, boys, try if you cannot get along better, and when you have
a quarrel again, bring it to Mr Clare or to me, and we will settle it
better than your blows and frowns can do."
You remember how Drake knocked Alfred from the footboard of his bed on
the occasion of our night meeting to get up the boat-race. That was a
good example of Drake's reckless rudeness, proceeding merely from his
boisterous disposition, but somehow those outbreaks were always directed
to Alfred, just as the rough points of Alfred's disposition were sure to
be turned to Drake. That fall had hurt Alfred, and from the date of the
commencement of our boat-practice, the war between the two had waxed
hotter and hotter. The contest seemed only to amuse Harry Higginson,
but Walter--our mentor, my conscientious, tender-hearted brother, who
led us all in games as well as in lessons--worried over it, and each day
he exhorted the two to govern their tempers, and, with great tact and
decision, whenever he saw a storm brewing, managed to throw oil upon the
waters. However, his influence did not heal up the difference, and in
about a fortnight, a few days before the intended race, there occurred
during our afternoon boat-practice a little row between the two
antagonists, which proved a final skirmish before the severe but
ludicrous battle which crowned the civil war.
We were rowing in Bath Bay as usual, Walter pulling the stroke oar, and
Harry Higginson the bow, whilst Drake and Alfred held the intermediate
positions, Drake sitting behind Alfred--that is, nearer the bow. I had
my place at the tiller.
Alfred Higginson had made a very ridiculous blunder in a French
translation that morning. Such a thing was unusual for him, and was
such a comical one that it set the others of the class in a roar of
laughter. Drake was so extravagantly affected by Alf's blunder that Mr
Clare had to stop his laughter, which was half genuine and half
pretence, by ordering him out of the room. Even then we heard him
ha-ha-ing outside. Poor Alfred was terribly mortified, and did not
recover his composure even when the school-hours were over, and the
first greeting he received, on emerging from the house, was from Drake,
who immediately mimicked Alfred's mistake, and performed a variety of
antics supposed to proceed from convulsions of mirth. On the way to the
boat, Drake continued to tease Alfred. Walter reproved him continually,
and even took hold of him once to compel him to stop; but he was in one
of his most boisterous moods, and was so very funny that he kept every
one but Alfred in shouts of laughter. But Alfred lashed him with the
bitterest satire, and, as they say, sometimes "made him laugh on the
other side of his mouth," until by the time we had reached the bay Drake
had subsided into silence, and the tight closing of his lips, and quick
walk, proved that Alfred's sharp wit was more fatal than Drake's broad
fun. Both of the boys rowed sullenly, and we all felt that a storm was
brewing. In the final round, when we made the course at our best and
timed the performance, so as to notice what improvement we were making,
Alfred caught a crab with his oar, in consequence of which the head of
Drake's oar hit him sharply in the back. The mortification of a miss
stroke is enough to anger a boatman, but coming as it did after the
morning's blunder in class, and made, too, a pain of the flesh by
Drake's blow, it was too much for Alfred's temper, and as Drake
increased the irritation by calling him an "awkward lout," and then
mimicking the blunder of translation with the accompaniment of a shout
of laughter, Alfred turned quickly, and hit his opponent a stinging blow
in the face.
In a moment the two boys grappled each other, and in a shorter period
than it takes my pen to write it, the boat was upset, and we were all in
the water. The combatants still clung to one another, and disappeared
together. The adage, however, that "discretion is the better part of
valour," enforced by such a deep, cold plunge, bore proof; for the irate
youths came to the surface apart, and we all struck out for the rocks,
distant about eighty yards. We climbed like half-drowned rats up the
shore, where the fight was not resumed. Its very strange continuation
was postponed until the Saturday after the boat-race, which must be
reserved for another chapter. We, however, read then, in the faces of
the discomfited antagonists, as plainly as you read here--
"To be continued."