George is introduced to work.—Heathenish instincts of
tow-lines.—Ungrateful conduct of a double-sculling skiff.—Towers
and towed.—A use discovered for lovers.—Strange disappearance of an
elderly lady.—Much haste, less speed.—Being towed by girls: exciting
sensation.—The missing lock or the haunted river.—Music.—Saved!
We made George work, now we had got him. He did not want to work, of
course; that goes without saying. He had had a hard time in the City,
so he explained. Harris, who is callous in his nature, and not prone to
pity, said:
“Ah! and now you are going to have a hard time on the river for a
change; change is good for everyone. Out you get!”
He could not in conscience—not even George’s conscience—object, though
he did suggest that, perhaps, it would be better for him to stop in the
boat, and get tea ready, while Harris and I towed, because getting tea
was such a worrying work, and Harris and I looked tired. The only reply
we made to this, however, was to pass him over the tow-line, and he
took it, and stepped out.
[Picture: Dog wrapped in tow-line] There is something very strange and
unaccountable about a tow-line. You roll it up with as much patience
and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and
five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly,
soul-revolting tangle.
I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took
an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle
of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that,
when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself
altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself
up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all
loops; and it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on
the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.
That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there may be
honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may
be tow-lines that are a credit to their profession—conscientious,
respectable tow-lines—tow-lines that do not imagine they are
crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the
instant they are left to themselves. I say there _may_ be such
tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are. But I have not met with them.
This tow-line I had taken in myself just before we had got to the lock.
I would not let Harris touch it, because he is careless. I had looped
it round slowly and cautiously, and tied it up in the middle, and
folded it in two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat.
Harris had lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George’s
hand. George had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had
begun to unravel it as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a
new-born infant; and, before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing
was more like a badly-made door-mat than anything else.
It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always goes on in
connection with it. The man on the bank, who is trying to disentangle
it, thinks all the fault lies with the man who rolled it up; and when a
man up the river thinks a thing, he says it.
“What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net of it?
You’ve made a nice mess you have; why couldn’t you wind it up properly,
you silly dummy?” he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildly
with it, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round and round
it, trying to find the end.
On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole cause of
the muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.
“It was all right when you took it!” he exclaims indignantly. “Why
don’t you think what you are doing? You go about things in such a
slap-dash style. You’d get a scaffolding pole entangled _you_ would!”
And they feel so angry with one another that they would like to hang
each other with the thing. Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives
a yell and goes mad, and dances on the rope, and tries to pull it
straight by seizing hold of the first piece that comes to his hand and
hauling at it. Of course, this only gets it into a tighter tangle than
ever. Then the second man climbs out of the boat and comes to help him,
and they get in each other’s way, and hinder one another. They both get
hold of the same bit of line, and pull at it in opposite directions,
and wonder where it is caught. In the end, they do get it clear, and
then turn round and find that the boat has drifted off, and is making
straight for the weir.
This really happened once to my own knowledge. It was up by Boveney,
one rather windy morning. We were pulling down stream, and, as we came
round the bend, we noticed a couple of men on the bank. They were
looking at each other with as bewildered and helplessly miserable
expression as I have ever witnessed on any human countenance before or
since, and they held a long tow-line between them. It was clear that
something had happened, so we eased up and asked them what was the
matter.
“Why, our boat’s gone off!” they replied in an indignant tone. “We just
got out to disentangle the tow-line, and when we looked round, it was
gone!”
And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a mean and
ungrateful act on the part of the boat.
We found the truant for them half a mile further down, held by some
rushes, and we brought it back to them. I bet they did not give that
boat another chance for a week.
I shall never forget the picture of those two men walking up and down
the bank with a tow-line, looking for their boat.
One sees a good many funny incidents up the river in connection with
towing. One of the most common is the sight of a couple of towers,
walking briskly along, deep in an animated discussion, while the man
in the boat, a hundred yards behind them, is vainly shrieking to them
to stop, and making frantic signs of distress with a scull. Something
has gone wrong; the rudder has come off, or the boat-hook has slipped
overboard, or his hat has dropped into the water and is floating
rapidly down stream.
He calls to them to stop, quite gently and politely at first.
[Picture: Hat in the water] “Hi! stop a minute, will you?” he shouts
cheerily. “I’ve dropped my hat over-board.”
Then: “Hi! Tom—Dick! can’t you hear?” not quite so affably this time.
Then: “Hi! Confound _you_, you dunder-headed idiots! Hi! stop! Oh you—!”
After that he springs up, and dances about, and roars himself red in
the face, and curses everything he knows. And the small boys on the
bank stop and jeer at him, and pitch stones at him as he is pulled
along past them, at the rate of four miles an hour, and can’t get out.
Much of this sort of trouble would be saved if those who are towing
would keep remembering that they are towing, and give a pretty frequent
look round to see how their man is getting on. It is best to let one
person tow. When two are doing it, they get chattering, and forget, and
the boat itself, offering, as it does, but little resistance, is of no
real service in reminding them of the fact.
As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can be to their
work, George told us, later on in the evening, when we were discussing
the subject after supper, of a very curious instance.
[Picture: Two people towing, boat adrift]
He and three other men, so he said, were sculling a very heavily laden
boat up from Maidenhead one evening, and a little above Cookham lock
they noticed a fellow and a girl, walking along the towpath, both deep
in an apparently interesting and absorbing conversation. They were
carrying a boat-hook between them, and, attached to the boat-hook was
a tow-line, which trailed behind them, its end in the water. No boat
was near, no boat was in sight. There must have been a boat attached
to that tow-line at some time or other, that was certain; but what had
become of it, what ghastly fate had overtaken it, and those who had
been left in it, was buried in mystery. Whatever the accident may have
been, however, it had in no way disturbed the young lady and gentleman,
who were towing. They had the boat-hook and they had the line, and that
seemed to be all that they thought necessary to their work.
George was about to call out and wake them up, but, at that moment,
a bright idea flashed across him, and he didn’t. He got the hitcher
instead, and reached over, and drew in the end of the tow-line; and
they made a loop in it, and put it over their mast, and then they
tidied up the sculls, and went and sat down in the stern, and lit their
pipes.
And that young man and young woman towed those four hulking chaps and a
heavy boat up to Marlow.
George said he never saw so much thoughtful sadness concentrated into
one glance before, as when, at the lock, that young couple grasped the
idea that, for the last two miles, they had been towing the wrong boat.
George fancied that, if it had not been for the restraining influence
of the sweet woman at his side, the young man might have given way to
violent language.
The maiden was the first to recover from her surprise, and, when she
did, she clasped her hands, and said, wildly:
“Oh, Henry, then _where_ is auntie?”
“Did they ever recover the old lady?” asked Harris.
George replied he did not know.
Another example of the dangerous want of sympathy between tower and
towed was witnessed by George and myself once up near Walton. It was
where the tow-path shelves gently down into the water, and we were
camping on the opposite bank, noticing things in general. By-and-by a
small boat came in sight, towed through the water at a tremendous pace
by a powerful barge horse, on which sat a very small boy. Scattered
about the boat, in dreamy and reposeful attitudes, lay five fellows,
the man who was steering having a particularly restful appearance.
“I should like to see him pull the wrong line,” murmured George, as
they passed. And at that precise moment the man did it, and the boat
rushed up the bank with a noise like the ripping up of forty thousand
linen sheets. Two men, a hamper, and three oars immediately left the
boat on the larboard side, and reclined on the bank, and one and a half
moments afterwards, two other men disembarked from the starboard, and
sat down among boat-hooks and sails and carpet-bags and bottles. The
last man went on twenty yards further, and then got out on his head.
This seemed to sort of lighten the boat, and it went on much easier,
the small boy shouting at the top of his voice, and urging his steed
into a gallop. The fellows sat up and stared at one another. It was
some seconds before they realised what had happened to them, but, when
they did, they began to shout lustily for the boy to stop. He, however,
was too much occupied with the horse to hear them, and we watched them,
flying after him, until the distance hid them from view.
I cannot say I was sorry at their mishap. Indeed, I only wish that all
the young fools who have their boats towed in this fashion—and plenty
do—could meet with similar misfortunes. Besides the risk they run
themselves, they become a danger and an annoyance to every other boat
they pass. Going at the pace they do, it is impossible for them to get
out of anybody else’s way, or for anybody else to get out of theirs.
Their line gets hitched across your mast, and overturns you, or it
catches somebody in the boat, and either throws them into the water,
or cuts their face open. The best plan is to stand your ground, and be
prepared to keep them off with the butt-end of a mast.
Of all experiences in connection with towing, the most exciting is
being towed by girls. It is a sensation that nobody ought to miss. It
takes three girls to tow always; two hold the rope, and the other one
runs round and round, and giggles. They generally begin by getting
themselves tied up. They get the line round their legs, and have to
sit down on the path and undo each other, and then they twist it round
their necks, and are nearly strangled. They fix it straight, however,
at last, and start off at a run, pulling the boat along at quite a
dangerous pace. At the end of a hundred yards they are naturally
breathless, and suddenly stop, and all sit down on the grass and laugh,
and your boat drifts out to mid-stream and turns round, before you know
what has happened, or can get hold of a scull. Then they stand up, and
are surprised.
“Oh, look!” they say; “he’s gone right out into the middle.”
[Picture: Lady pinning up frock] They pull on pretty steadily for a
bit, after this, and then it all at once occurs to one of them that she
will pin up her frock, and they ease up for the purpose, and the boat
runs aground.
You jump up, and push it off, and you shout to them not to stop.
“Yes. What’s the matter?” they shout back.
“Don’t stop,” you roar.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t stop—go on—go on!”
“Go back, Emily, and see what it is they want,” says one; and Emily
comes back, and asks what it is.
“What do you want?” she says; “anything happened?”
“No,” you reply, “it’s all right; only go on, you know—don’t stop.”
“Why not?”
“Why, we can’t steer, if you keep stopping. You must keep some way on
the boat.”
“Keep some what?”
“Some way—you must keep the boat moving.”
“Oh, all right, I’ll tell ’em. Are we doing it all right?”
“Oh, yes, very nicely, indeed, only don’t stop.”
“It doesn’t seem difficult at all. I thought it was so hard.”
“Oh, no, it’s simple enough. You want to keep on steady at it, that’s
all.”
“I see. Give me out my red shawl, it’s under the cushion.”
You find the shawl, and hand it out, and by this time another one has
come back and thinks she will have hers too, and they take Mary’s on
chance, and Mary does not want it, so they bring it back and have a
pocket-comb instead. It is about twenty minutes before they get off
again, and, at the next corner, they see a cow, and you have to leave
the boat to chivy the cow out of their way.
There is never a dull moment in the boat while girls are towing it.
George got the line right after a while, and towed us steadily on to
Penton Hook. There we discussed the important question of camping. We
had decided to sleep on board that night, and we had either to lay
up just about there, or go on past Staines. It seemed early to think
about shutting up then, however, with the sun still in the heavens, and
we settled to push straight on for Runnymead, three and a half miles
further, a quiet wooded part of the river, and where there is good
shelter.
We all wished, however, afterward that we had stopped at Penton Hook.
Three or four miles up stream is a trifle, early in the morning, but it
is a weary pull at the end of a long day. You take no interest in the
scenery during these last few miles. You do not chat and laugh. Every
half-mile you cover seems like two. You can hardly believe you are only
where you are, and you are convinced that the map must be wrong; and,
when you have trudged along for what seems to you at least ten miles,
and still the lock is not in sight, you begin to seriously fear that
somebody must have sneaked it, and run off with it.
I remember being terribly upset once up the river (in a figurative
sense, I mean). I was out with a young lady—cousin on my mother’s
side—and we were pulling down to Goring. It was rather late, and we
were anxious to get in—at least _she_ was anxious to get in. It was
half-past six when we reached Benson’s lock, and dusk was drawing on,
and she began to get excited then. She said she must be in to supper.
I said it was a thing I felt I wanted to be in at, too; and I drew out
a map I had with me to see exactly how far it was. I saw it was just a
mile and a half to the next lock—Wallingford—and five on from there to
Cleeve.
“Oh, it’s all right!” I said. “We’ll be through the next lock before
seven, and then there is only one more;” and I settled down and pulled
steadily away.
We passed the bridge, and soon after that I asked if she saw the lock.
She said no, she did not see any lock; and I said, “Oh!” and pulled on.
Another five minutes went by, and then I asked her to look again.
“No,” she said; “I can’t see any signs of a lock.”
“You—you are sure you know a lock, when you do see one?” I asked
hesitatingly, not wishing to offend her.
The question did offend her, however, and she suggested that I had
better look for myself; so I laid down the sculls, and took a view.
The river stretched out straight before us in the twilight for about a
mile; not a ghost of a lock was to be seen.
“You don’t think we have lost our way, do you?” asked my companion.
I did not see how that was possible; though, as I suggested, we might
have somehow got into the weir stream, and be making for the falls.
This idea did not comfort her in the least, and she began to cry. She
said we should both be drowned, and that it was a judgment on her for
coming out with me.
It seemed an excessive punishment, I thought; but my cousin thought
not, and hoped it would all soon be over.
I tried to reassure her, and to make light of the whole affair. I said
that the fact evidently was that I was not rowing as fast as I fancied
I was, but that we should soon reach the lock now; and I pulled on for
another mile.
Then I began to get nervous myself. I looked again at the map. There
was Wallingford lock, clearly marked, a mile and a half below Benson’s.
It was a good, reliable map; and, besides, I recollected the lock
myself. I had been through it twice. Where were we? What had happened
to us? I began to think it must be all a dream, and that I was really
asleep in bed, and should wake up in a minute, and be told it was past
ten.
I asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and she replied
that she was just about to ask me the same question; and then we both
wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who was the real one that
was dreaming, and who was the one that was only a dream; it got quite
interesting.
I still went on pulling, however, and still no lock came in sight, and
the river grew more and more gloomy and mysterious under the gathering
shadows of night, and things seemed to be getting weird and uncanny. I
thought of hobgoblins and banshees, and will-o’-the-wisps, and those
wicked girls who sit up all night on rocks, and lure people into
whirl-pools and things; and I wished I had been a better man, and knew
more hymns; and in the middle of these reflections I heard the blessed
strains of “He’s got ’em on,” played, badly, on a concertina, and knew
that we were saved.
I do not admire the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh! how
beautiful the music seemed to us both then—far, far more beautiful
than the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo, or anything of that
sort could have sounded. Heavenly melody, in our then state of mind,
would only have still further harrowed us. A soul-moving harmony,
correctly performed, we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and
have given up all hope. But about the strains of “He’s got ’em on,”
jerked spasmodically, and with involuntary variations, out of a wheezy
accordion, there was something singularly human and reassuring.
The sweet sounds drew nearer, and soon the boat from which they were
worked lay alongside us.
It contained a party of provincial ’Arrys and ’Arriets, out for a
moonlight sail. (There was not any moon, but that was not their fault.)
I never saw more attractive, lovable people in all my life. I hailed
them, and asked if they could tell me the way to Wallingford lock; and
I explained that I had been looking for it for the last two hours.
“Wallingford lock!” they answered. “Lor’ love you, sir, that’s been
done away with for over a year. There ain’t no Wallingford lock
now, sir. You’re close to Cleeve now. Blow me tight if ’ere ain’t a
gentleman been looking for Wallingford lock, Bill!”
I had never thought of that. I wanted to fall upon all their necks and
bless them; but the stream was running too strong just there to allow
of this, so I had to content myself with mere cold-sounding words of
gratitude.
We thanked them over and over again, and we said it was a lovely night,
and we wished them a pleasant trip, and, I think, I invited them all
to come and spend a week with me, and my cousin said her mother would
be so pleased to see them. And we sang the soldiers’ chorus out of
_Faust_, and got home in time for supper, after all.
[Picture: People in rowing boat]