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.
