Our first night.—Under canvas.—An appeal for help.—Contrariness of
tea-kettles, how to overcome.—Supper.—How to feel virtuous.—Wanted! a
comfortably-appointed, well-drained desert island, neighbourhood of
South Pacific Ocean preferred.—Funny thing that happened to George’s
father.—a restless night.
Harris and I began to think that Bell Weir lock must have been done
away with after the same manner. George had towed us up to Staines, and
we had taken the boat from there, and it seemed that we were dragging
fifty tons after us, and were walking forty miles. It was half-past
seven when we were through, and we all got in, and sculled up close to
the left bank, looking out for a spot to haul up in.
We had originally intended to go on to Magna Charta Island, a sweetly
pretty part of the river, where it winds through a soft, green valley,
and to camp in one of the many picturesque inlets to be found round
that tiny shore. But, somehow, we did not feel that we yearned for the
picturesque nearly so much now as we had earlier in the day. A bit of
water between a coal-barge and a gas-works would have quite satisfied
us for that night. We did not want scenery. We wanted to have our
supper and go to bed. However, we did pull up to the point—“Picnic
Point,” it is called—and dropped into a very pleasant nook under a
great elm-tree, to the spreading roots of which we fastened the boat.
Then we thought we were going to have supper (we had dispensed with
tea, so as to save time), but George said no; that we had better get
the canvas up first, before it got quite dark, and while we could see
what we were doing. Then, he said, all our work would be done, and we
could sit down to eat with an easy mind.
That canvas wanted more putting up than I think any of us had bargained
for. It looked so simple in the abstract. You took five iron arches,
like gigantic croquet hoops, and fitted them up over the boat, and then
stretched the canvas over them, and fastened it down: it would take
quite ten minutes, we thought.
That was an under-estimate.
We took up the hoops, and began to drop them into the sockets placed
for them. You would not imagine this to be dangerous work; but, looking
back now, the wonder to me is that any of us are alive to tell the
tale. They were not hoops, they were demons. First they would not fit
into their sockets at all, and we had to jump on them, and kick them,
and hammer at them with the boat-hook; and, when they were in, it
turned out that they were the wrong hoops for those particular sockets,
and they had to come out again.
But they would not come out, until two of us had gone and struggled
with them for five minutes, when they would jump up suddenly, and
try and throw us into the water and drown us. They had hinges in the
middle, and, when we were not looking, they nipped us with these hinges
in delicate parts of the body; and, while we were wrestling with one
side of the hoop, and endeavouring to persuade it to do its duty, the
other side would come behind us in a cowardly manner, and hit us over
the head.
We got them fixed at last, and then all that was to be done was to
arrange the covering over them. George unrolled it, and fastened one
end over the nose of the boat. Harris stood in the middle to take it
from George and roll it on to me, and I kept by the stern to receive
it. It was a long time coming down to me. George did his part all
right, but it was new work to Harris, and he bungled it.
How he managed it I do not know, he could not explain himself; but
by some mysterious process or other he succeeded, after ten minutes
of superhuman effort, in getting himself completely rolled up in
it. He was so firmly wrapped round and tucked in and folded over,
that he could not get out. He, of course, made frantic struggles for
freedom—the birthright of every Englishman,—and, in doing so (I learned
this afterwards), knocked over George; and then George, swearing at
Harris, began to struggle too, and got _himself_ entangled and rolled
up.
[Picture: Watching and waiting] I knew nothing about all this at the
time. I did not understand the business at all myself. I had been
told to stand where I was, and wait till the canvas came to me, and
Montmorency and I stood there and waited, both as good as gold. We
could see the canvas being violently jerked and tossed about, pretty
considerably; but we supposed this was part of the method, and did not
interfere.
We also heard much smothered language coming from underneath it, and
we guessed that they were finding the job rather troublesome, and
concluded that we would wait until things had got a little simpler
before we joined in.
We waited some time, but matters seemed to get only more and more
involved, until, at last, George’s head came wriggling out over the
side of the boat, and spoke up.
It said:
“Give us a hand here, can’t you, you cuckoo; standing there like a
stuffed mummy, when you see we are both being suffocated, you dummy!”
I never could withstand an appeal for help, so I went and undid them;
not before it was time, either, for Harris was nearly black in the face.
It took us half an hour’s hard labour, after that, before it was
properly up, and then we cleared the decks, and got out supper. We put
the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the
stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the
other things out.
That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees
that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing.
You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to
have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will
soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.
It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very
loudly to each other about how you don’t need any tea, and are not
going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear
you, and then you shout out, “I don’t want any tea; do you, George?”
to which George shouts back, “Oh, no, I don’t like tea; we’ll have
lemonade instead—tea’s so indigestible.” Upon which the kettle boils
over, and puts the stove out.
We adopted this harmless bit of trickery, and the result was that, by
the time everything else was ready, the tea was waiting. Then we lit
the lantern, and squatted down to supper.
We wanted that supper.
For five-and-thirty minutes not a sound was heard throughout the
length and breadth of that boat, save the clank of cutlery and
crockery, and the steady grinding of four sets of molars. At the end of
five-and-thirty minutes, Harris said, “Ah!” and took his left leg out
from under him and put his right one there instead.
Five minutes afterwards, George said, “Ah!” too, and threw his plate
out on the bank; and, three minutes later than that, Montmorency gave
the first sign of contentment he had exhibited since we had started,
and rolled over on his side, and spread his legs out; and then I said,
“Ah!” and bent my head back, and bumped it against one of the hoops,
but I did not mind it. I did not even swear.
How good one feels when one is full—how satisfied with ourselves
and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear
conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach
does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily
obtained. One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and
well-digested meal—so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive
organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so.
It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon,
it says, “Work!” After beefsteak and porter, it says, “Sleep!” After
a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don’t let it stand
more than three minutes), it says to the brain, “Now, rise, and show
your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear
eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering
thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath
you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”
After hot muffins, it says, “Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the
field—a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy,
or of hope, or fear, or love, or life.” And after brandy, taken in
sufficient quantity, it says, “Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that
your fellow-men may laugh—drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless
sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor man whose wit and will
are drowned, like kittens, side by side, in half an inch of alcohol.”
We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after
morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach,
and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will
come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own;
and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father—a
noble, pious man.
Before our supper, Harris and George and I were quarrelsome and
snappy and ill-tempered; after our supper, we sat and beamed on one
another, and we beamed upon the dog, too. We loved each other, we loved
everybody. Harris, in moving about, trod on George’s corn. Had this
happened before supper, George would have expressed wishes and desires
concerning Harris’s fate in this world and the next that would have
made a thoughtful man shudder.
As it was, he said: “Steady, old man; ’ware wheat.”
And Harris, instead of merely observing, in his most unpleasant tones,
that a fellow could hardly help treading on some bit of George’s foot,
if he had to move about at all within ten yards of where George was
sitting, suggesting that George never ought to come into an ordinary
sized boat with feet that length, and advising him to hang them over
the side, as he would have done before supper, now said: “Oh, I’m so
sorry, old chap; I hope I haven’t hurt you.”
[Picture: Smoking pipes] And George said: “Not at all;” that it was his
fault; and Harris said no, it was his.
It was quite pretty to hear them.
We lit our pipes, and sat, looking out on the quiet night, and talked.
George said why could not we be always like this—away from the world,
with its sin and temptation, leading sober, peaceful lives, and doing
good. I said it was the sort of thing I had often longed for myself;
and we discussed the possibility of our going away, we four, to some
handy, well-fitted desert island, and living there in the woods.
Harris said that the danger about desert islands, as far as he had
heard, was that they were so damp: but George said no, not if properly
drained.
And then we got on to drains, and that put George in mind of a very
funny thing that happened to his father once. He said his father was
travelling with another fellow through Wales, and, one night, they
stopped at a little inn, where there were some other fellows, and they
joined the other fellows, and spent the evening with them.
They had a very jolly evening, and sat up late, and, by the time they
came to go to bed, they (this was when George’s father was a very young
man) were slightly jolly, too. They (George’s father and George’s
father’s friend) were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds.
They took the candle, and went up. The candle lurched up against the
wall when they got into the room, and went out, and they had to undress
and grope into bed in the dark. This they did; but, instead of getting
into separate beds, as they thought they were doing, they both climbed
into the same one without knowing it—one getting in with his head
at the top, and the other crawling in from the opposite side of the
compass, and lying with his feet on the pillow.
There was silence for a moment, and then George’s father said:
“Joe!”
“What’s the matter, Tom?” replied Joe’s voice from the other end of the
bed.
“Why, there’s a man in my bed,” said George’s father; “here’s his feet
on my pillow.”
“Well, it’s an extraordinary thing, Tom,” answered the other; “but I’m
blest if there isn’t a man in my bed, too!”
“What are you going to do?” asked George’s father.
“Well, I’m going to chuck him out,” replied Joe.
“So am I,” said George’s father, valiantly.
There was a brief struggle, followed by two heavy bumps on the floor,
and then a rather doleful voice said:
“I say, Tom!”
“Yes!”
“How have you got on?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, my man’s chucked _me_ out.”
“So’s mine! I say, I don’t think much of this inn, do you?”
“What was the name of that inn?” said Harris.
“The Pig and Whistle,” said George. “Why?”
“Ah, no, then it isn’t the same,” replied Harris.
“What do you mean?” queried George.
“Why it’s so curious,” murmured Harris, “but precisely that very same
thing happened to _my_ father once at a country inn. I’ve often heard
him tell the tale. I thought it might have been the same inn.”
We turned in at ten that night, and I thought I should sleep well,
being tired; but I didn’t. As a rule, I undress and put my head on the
pillow, and then somebody bangs at the door, and says it is half-past
eight: but, to-night, everything seemed against me; the novelty of
it all, the hardness of the boat, the cramped position (I was lying
with my feet under one seat, and my head on another), the sound of the
lapping water round the boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me
restless and disturbed.
I did get to sleep for a few hours, and then some part of the boat
which seemed to have grown up in the night—for it certainly was not
there when we started, and it had disappeared by the morning—kept
digging into my spine. I slept through it for a while, dreaming that I
had swallowed a sovereign, and that they were cutting a hole in my back
with a gimlet, so as to try and get it out. I thought it very unkind
of them, and I told them I would owe them the money, and they should
have it at the end of the month. But they would not hear of that, and
said it would be much better if they had it then, because otherwise the
interest would accumulate so. I got quite cross with them after a bit,
and told them what I thought of them, and then they gave the gimlet
such an excruciating wrench that I woke up.
The boat seemed stuffy, and my head ached; so I thought I would step
out into the cool night-air. I slipped on what clothes I could find
about—some of my own, and some of George’s and Harris’s—and crept under
the canvas on to the bank.
It was a glorious night. The moon had sunk, and left the quiet earth
alone with the stars. It seemed as if, in the silence and the hush,
while we her children slept, they were talking with her, their
sister—conversing of mighty mysteries in voices too vast and deep for
childish human ears to catch the sound.
They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are as children
whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they
have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the
echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half
hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there.
And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its
great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been
so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and
of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us.
Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon
our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers,
and smiles; and, though she does not speak, we know what she would say,
and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.
Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very
silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night’s
heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our
hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away
beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a
mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great
Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that
Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.
Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look upon that
wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak of it, or
tell the mystery they know.
Once upon a time, through a strange country, there rode some goodly
knights, and their path lay by a deep wood, where tangled briars grew
very thick and strong, and tore the flesh of them that lost their way
therein. And the leaves of the trees that grew in the wood were very
dark and thick, so that no ray of light came through the branches to
lighten the gloom and sadness.
And, as they passed by that dark wood, one knight of those that rode,
missing his comrades, wandered far away, and returned to them no more;
and they, sorely grieving, rode on without him, mourning him as one
dead.
Now, when they reached the fair castle towards which they had been
journeying, they stayed there many days, and made merry; and one night,
as they sat in cheerful ease around the logs that burned in the great
hall, and drank a loving measure, there came the comrade they had lost,
and greeted them. His clothes were ragged, like a beggar’s, and many
sad wounds were on his sweet flesh, but upon his face there shone a
great radiance of deep joy.
And they questioned him, asking him what had befallen him: and he told
them how in the dark wood he had lost his way, and had wandered many
days and nights, till, torn and bleeding, he had lain him down to die.
Then, when he was nigh unto death, lo! through the savage gloom there
came to him a stately maiden, and took him by the hand and led him on
through devious paths, unknown to any man, until upon the darkness of
the wood there dawned a light such as the light of day was unto but as
a little lamp unto the sun; and, in that wondrous light, our way-worn
knight saw as in a dream a vision, and so glorious, so fair the vision
seemed, that of his bleeding wounds he thought no more, but stood as
one entranced, whose joy is deep as is the sea, whereof no man can tell
the depth.
And the vision faded, and the knight, kneeling upon the ground, thanked
the good saint who into that sad wood had strayed his steps, so he had
seen the vision that lay there hid.
And the name of the dark forest was Sorrow; but of the vision that the
good knight saw therein we may not speak nor tell.