We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every
form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then George
went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so
unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away
the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.
There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a
mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the
thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river,
and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and
rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead.
Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is the haunt of the
river swell and his overdressed female companion. It is the town of
showy hotels, patronised chiefly by dudes and ballet girls. It is the
witch's kitchen from which go forth those demons of the river - steam-
launches. The LONDON JOURNAL duke always has his "little place" at
Maidenhead; and the heroine of the three-volume novel always dines there
when she goes out on the spree with somebody else's husband.
