A crew of Johnians were rowing down the Cam on a fine summer day, in
their own boat Two of them were freshmen--sixth form boys in manners and
pursuits; the coxswain had entered on his third year, and was reading
for honours. These were English youths. The fourth--Morgan ap
Tydvill--was from Wales, a pleasant, companionable fellow, proud of his
country, proud of his own family in particular, and proud of the boat,
of which he was part owner; generous and friendly, but very choleric,
though easily calmed down. The fifth was Gerald O'Mackerry, of Irish
genealogy, as his name intimates, and his patronymic was a subject of
much harmless pride with him. These two latter personages were in their
second year.
For some time the four rowers bent earnestly to their oars, the coxswain
doing the principal part of the talking work; but as the stream carried
the boat along, and there was no necessity for constant pulling, they at
times restrained their arms to let their tongues run free. The chatting
commenced thus:--
"We haven't given a name to the boat yet."
"Well, I vote for the `Hose.'"
"I think the `shamrock' sounds well," said O'Mackerry.
"The Leek," was Ap Tydvill's suggestion.
"`_Leek_!'--an unlucky name!" observed Green, the coxswain, who, though
a gentlemen and a scholar, was sadly addicted to punning; but they were
all of Saint John's College, and therefore punsters by prescription.
This bad pun let out a good deal of punning; when it ceased to flow, the
original subject was renewed.
"Will the Trinity boat beat us next month? They have a choice crew, all
in capital condition, and heavy men. O'Mack is the only twelve stone
man here," (all gownsmen, you know, are _men_, however boyish in years
and appearance), "and Tyd is such a little fellow!"
"I'm five feet seven," replied he, rather snappishly; "and I can tell
you that the mean height of a man's stature is but five feet four.
(Murmurs of dissent.) O'Mack is about ten inches above the standard;
but I'll back a man of my own height (drawing himself up majestically)
against him for walking, jumping, running, fighting, wrestling,
swimming, throwing a bar, or rowing a long distance--if he have my
breadth of chest and shoulders, and such an arm as this," displaying a
limb as hard and muscular as that of a blacksmith. By his own estimate
he was of the perfect size and form.
"In wrestling nimble, and in running swift;
Well made to strike, to leap, to throw, to lift."
His vanity, however, though quizzed unmercifully, was not humiliated by
any detected failure in his bodily proportions, which he submitted to
measurement. The circumference of his arm and wrist was considerable--
the whole limb and his chest brawny, hirsute, and muscular.
"I'm not afraid of Trinity," shouted he loudly, if not musically.
"_Sumamus longum haustum et fortem haustum, et haustum Omne simul_, as
Lord Dufferin said at the Norwegian Symposium, and we shall bump them."
At the spirited Latin watchword, our Cantabs commenced a chorus, "_Omne
simul, omne simul_," etc, etc, which Tyd himself had set to an old Welsh
tune of the Bardic days. The effect was thrilling--the coxswain, both
sonorously and with a correct ear, singing, "_Omne simul, omne simul_,"
and beating time with his feet against the stretcher, while the rowers,
arms and lungs and all, pulled and chorused sympathetically.
This sport lasted about half an hour, and then the question was again
mooted, "What name shall we give to the boat?"
Green, the steersman, put the question: "Those who vote for the Rose
will say ay--three ays; those who vote for the Shamrock--one; those who
vote for the Leek--one."
"The ays have it."
Three triumphant cheers for the majority.
The freshman, quite cockahoop at the victory gained over Ap Tydvill and
O'Mackerry, ventured to ask the Welshman "how it happened that a leek
became the national emblem of Wales?" He readily answered, "When my
country was able to lick (query: leek) your country,--I don't include
yours, O'Mackerry,--one of our jolly old princes having gained a great
victory over one of your Saxon leaders and his army, took up a _chive_,
which he found growing somewhere near the Wye, and said, `We'll wear
this henceforward as a memorial of this victory.'"
"Pooh, pooh," said the coxswain; "the true version is this. Once upon a
time, Wales was so infested with monkeys that the natives were obliged
to ask the English to lend them a hand in destroying them. The English
generously came to their assistance; but not perceiving any distinction
between the Welsh and the monkeys, they killed a great number of the
former, by mistake of course; so, in order to distinguish them, clearly,
they requested that the Welshmen would stick a leek in their bonnets."
A running fire (though on water) commenced against poor Monsieur Du
Leek--as the bantering youngsters, with profound bows and affected
gravity, chose to name Ap Tydvill--of pedigree immeasurable.
However, he recovered his serenity, after an explosion of wrath somewhat
dangerous for a moment; and, on the free trade principle, began to quiz
some one else.
"Mack," said he, "do you remember the ducking you got _there_, among the
_arundines Cami_?" pointing to a deep sedgy part of the river.
"I do; and I had, indeed, a narrow escape from drowning, or rather from
being suffocated in the deep sludgy mud."
"How was it?" one of the others asked.
"I was poling a punt along the bank, looking for waterfowl to have a
shot, you know, and I pulled myself into the river!"
"You mean, Paddy," said Mr Tydvill, "that you pulled yourself out of
the river."
"No; I mean what I say; there is no blunder for you to grin at. I stuck
the pole so firmly into the deep mud, that I could not pull it out; but
it pulled me in."
"Why didn't you let go at once?"
"I hadn't time to think of that; instinctively I grasped the pole, lost
my balance, and tumbled into the river."
The unfortunate youth was extracted from the deep slime among osiers by
a labourer near hand, and he dried his clothes in a cottage--
"Quae villula tectum,
Praebuit--"
without any bad results.
"But, do you remember, Master Tydvill," said O'Mackerry, "the day when I
was so near catching you and throwing you into the deep hole--clothes
and all? Ay, and you deserved a ducking?"
"But really, Mack, would you have pitched me in, when you knew that I
was a bad swimmer, especially when dressed?"
"Assuredly I would have done so, for I was unusually hot in my temper,
though very cold in my body at that moment; however, I suppose that I
should have acted the part of the Newfoundland dog, and dragged the
puppy by his neck out of the water."
This complimentary part he addressed to the crew at large, and then
described the incident.
He had been sitting on the top bar of a ladder, of which the lower end
rested on the bottom of a very deep part of the river under a high and
steep bank, for the purpose of aiding a swimmer in his ascent from the
water. The day was cold, and O'Mackerry remained in a crouching posture
for a few moments on the ladder, meditating the plunge, but not taking
it. His playful friend stole behind and jerked him, heels over head,
into the water, and immediately ran away. O'Mackerry, after recovering
from the shock and getting out of the river, pursued the offender nearly
half a mile, and happily without catching him. Tydvill rather
unhandsomely afterwards caricatured his friend as a barometrical green
frog in a broad pellucid bottle partly filled with water, squatting on a
rung of a ladder, ingeniously serving as a graduated scale, to show the
condition of the atmosphere; the frog rising or descending as its
sensations led it to immerse its body in water, or rise more or less
above it. O'Mackerry was a capital swimmer, and was sometimes seen to
capsize himself from an Indian canoe, which he had purchased somewhere
on the river Shannon, into its tidal waters with his clothes on, for the
purpose of habituating himself to swim under such difficulty. He had
the satisfaction of saving the lives of two persons in danger of
drowning, by his skill, courage, and presence of mind.
"But how did you learn to swim and dive so well?"
"When I was a little boy, I was fond of books of Voyages, and I liked,
above all things, to read the description of the bathing pranks of the
Otaheite savages, who were such active divers, that when a nail was
thrown overboard, they would plunge after it, and catch it before it
reached the bottom. I thought that I could do what a savage did so
easily, and I soon learned to do what so many animals do without any
instruction at all. If you want a model, take a frog, and imitate its
motions in the water. Courage is everything."
"But, Mack, every one hasn't such long and strong legs and arms as you
have--just like a frog's."
"Thank you for the comparison--not for the first time, Master Tyd--but I
have not a great belly like a frog's, which is useful in swimming--at
least in floating. A large pot-bellied man may lie on the water as long
as he likes, if he keeps his head well back so as to have it supported
by the water--and with his heels closed and neck up."
"But surely in that position he would be like a log on the water, and
make no way," remarked some one of the listeners.
"True, but he can rest himself in that position until he chooses to
strike out again. Just fancy yourself a fish: you are specifically
lighter than water, and you can lie as near the surface as you please;
use your fins and you can move about to the right or left--as a boat is
moved by its oars; use your tail and you steer in any direction--as the
rudder turns the direction of the boat. Then fancy your fins and tail
cut off--there you lie like a raft--without poles or oars--but you do
not sink. If you have one fin, or part of one, you move like a boat
with one whole or broken oar. Now our bodily apparatus is not designed
like that of a fish for swimming, but it is capable of enabling us to
swim sufficiently well for our necessities. Just read Old Franklin on
the art of swimming, and you will understand the theory of the matter at
once. The great difficulty in practice is the fear which people have of
being drowned, and this can only be overcome by accustoming ourselves to
the water."
"Now, Mack," said Tydvill, "you know I cannot swim; what ought I to have
done if you had pitched me into that awful hole?"
"You should have kept yourself from struggling and plunging, letting the
back of your head lie quietly under the water, with your mouth free for
breathing--but not for screaming and water-drinking--till I had taken
the trouble of catching hold of you."
"But surely," replied Tydvill, "the weight of my clothes would have sunk
me?"
"I think not," rejoined his friend; "the water would have supported them
too, though you'd have found them very heavy when you came out of it.
Will you try the experiment?"
"The theory is sufficient for me," concluded the sprightly Welshman.
However, another of the crew put this question:--
"Since the body can be supported on the surface of the water, as
O'Mackerry has said, and with little exertion, or without any, as in
swimming on the back, how is it that a drowned body sinks, and often
rises some days afterwards?"
"Because," said our philosopher,--who had been crammed on the
subject,--"the lungs of a drowning person become filled with water, and
therefore the body, becoming specifically heavier, sinks. The body
remains at the bottom only until the water has been quite freed from it
by _compression_; it then is swelled and expanded by gases generated
within, and becoming lighter than the water, rises to the top."
They had for some time been leaning on their oars, enjoying this chat,
and were about to retrace their course, when one of the English lads
asked O'Mackerry if he had ever been in real danger in a boat. The
other reflected a little, and then thought of an incident which had
occurred to him some years ago, before he had learned to swim. "Yes,"
said he, "but for God's good providence I would have been," ("You mean
_should_, I suppose," said Coxswain Green, in an under tone) "assuredly
drowned. I had been contriving how to put out striker lines in a deep
loch near my father's house, and, not having a boat, I substituted a
stable door, taken from its hinges, as a raft for my purpose. I had
read of rafts on the Rhine with whole families on them--with a cabin and
cow-house and pig-sty; and why should not my miniature raft support my
weight? I floated the door--balanced myself nicely upon it--put out for
the middle of the loch, gently paddling it with a pole, and fearful of
the slightest change of my position, which would have destroyed the
horizontal equilibrium of my feeble raft. When I had gone far enough--
into water thirty or forty feet deep--I sent off the strikers, but
unfortunately flung away my paddle along with them. My insensibly
nervous movements caused the door to incline into the water at one side
an inch or two. I moved a hair's breadth; it then declined to the other
side. It would sink. I had no doubt of this. Then I gently stooped to
try if I could unfasten a shoe; but this was impracticable. I tried a
balancing movement again, and the door righted, but not entirely. My
presence of mind, however, did not fail me. I took off my hat, and
paddled myself with this from side to side alternately, until I reached
the strand--through thick masses of aquatic plants--the water-lily in
particular, whose long and interlacing stems would have embraced me to
death, if I had fallen among them. I have never known any one to swim
or bathe in that dangerously deep loch. I do not see how I could have
escaped drowning at that time if I had slipped from the raft."
This led the adventurous youth to narrate another difficulty from which
he had been mercifully extricated by God's providence. He had been
snipe-shooting in an Irish hog, and thoughtlessly trod upon a green,
firm, and sound-looking, but very treacherous quagmire, us he was
watching a snipe which had just sprung up. He was suddenly immersed in
the semi-fluid peat to his shoulders, and only saved from quickly
subsiding into the depths of the morass by a solid bed of clay, at the
depth of five feet and a half. He sank to his under lip, barely
escaping suffocation, and having his breath spared for shouting. He was
pulled up by various contrivances, a reeking column of black mire. As
it seemed clear that Mr O'Mackerry must have been engulfed in the bog
if he had been half an inch under six feet two in stature, it was
illogically argued that it would be a general advantage to manhood if
all were exceedingly tall--suppose of the height of the suite of the
Duke of Brunswick (composed of men some inches above seven feet), which
came to London a hundred years ago.
"Of course," said Tydvill, "Churchill is right in the Rosciad when he
says:
"`Your hero should be always tall, you know.'"
But the wiser ones of the crew showed that the ordinary height, as fixed
by the Almighty, is the best. If the scale of men were raised a foot or
so, with proportioned frame and weight, horses and other beasts of
burden should be increased also; else the giants could neither hunt nor
even travel, nor find beef and mutton, etc, for their support. And if
the animals were larger, more grass, etc, would be required than at
present. The whole scale of proportions would require alteration. Who
can dare to think that God's design is not the best? Neither giants nor
dwarfs form the general rule, and extreme exceptions are happily very
rare.
"What became of the gun?" inquired one of the party. "I hope that was
not swallowed up?"
"No; that was pulled up with me. I had kept fast hold of it; we fell
and rose together, and so I was not--
"`Doomed to perish by the slaughtering gun.'"
However, it was unfit for service, like its owner, for the remainder of
that day; its chilled barrel looked as if it were moaning forth to me,
in hollow tone,--
"`Stay by me--thou art resolute and faithful;
I have employment worthy of thy arm.'"
It will be seen that Mr O'Mackerry had a smattering of classical lore.
He was asked to name his last poet.
"Dryden," said he, off-hand.
"You hadn't a _dry_ den when you were up to your chin in the wet, black
hole," quickly added Tydvill. Here there was unanimous applause.
This led to some conversational nonsense about punning.
"What is a pun?"
"Don't you know," said O'Mackerry, "Swift's definition in the essay
which he entitled `The Ars Punica sive flos linguarum, by Tom-Pun-Sibi,
Dublin?'" None other of the crew knew anything concerning it; O'Mack
therefore gave them the concluding part as a specimen, and in reply to
the question. "Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words,
which, passing in at the ears and falling upon the diaphragms, excites a
titillatory motion in those parts, and this being conveyed by the animal
spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart,
and promotes the end of good fellowship, which is laughing."
Just at that moment the crew in training for the coming race between the
rival universities neared the Rose, for so the boat must now be called,
and, as in duty bound, the latter drew to the opposite bank to allow the
eight-oared cutter to pass at fullest speed, and then following in her
wake, the rest of the trip was passed in comparative silence, so eagerly
did our freshmen note each movement of that skilful crew.