And then, unable to stand their brutal
jibes any longer, he turned round on them, and they saw his face!
I was glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left in them to
look very foolish. They explained to him that they had thought he was
some one they knew. They said they hoped he would not deem them capable
of so insulting any one except a personal friend of their own.
Of course their having mistaken him for a friend excused it. I remember
Harris telling me once of a bathing experience he had at Boulogne. He
was swimming about there near the beach, when he felt himself suddenly
seized by the neck from behind, and forcibly plunged under water. He
struggled violently, but whoever had got hold of him seemed to be a
perfect Hercules in strength, and all his efforts to escape were
unavailing. He had given up kicking, and was trying to turn his thoughts
upon solemn things, when his captor released him.
He regained his feet, and looked round for his would-be murderer. The
assassin was standing close by him, laughing heartily, but the moment he
caught sight of Harris's face, as it emerged from the water, he started
back and seemed quite concerned.
"I really beg your pardon," he stammered confusedly, "but I took you for
a friend of mine!"
Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistaken him for a
relation, or he would probably have been drowned outright.
Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practice too - though, as a
boy, I did not think so. I had an idea it came natural to a body, like
rounders and touch. I knew another boy who held this view likewise, and
so, one windy day, we thought we would try the sport. We were stopping
down at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up the Yare. We
hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge, and started off. "It's
rather a rough day," said the man to us, as we put off: "better take in a
reef and luff sharp when you get round the bend."
We said we would make a point of it, and left him with a cheery "Good-
morning," wondering to ourselves how you "luffed," and where we were to
get a "reef" from, and what we were to do with it when we had got it.
We rowed until we were out of sight of the town, and then, with a wide
stretch of water in front of us, and the wind blowing a perfect hurricane
across it, we felt that the time had come to commence operations.
Hector - I think that was his name - went on pulling while I unrolled the
sail. It seemed a complicated job, but I accomplished it at length, and
then came the question, which was the top end?
By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventually decided that the
bottom was the top, and set to work to fix it upside-down. But it was a
long time before we could get it up, either that way or any other way.
The impression on the mind of the sail seemed to be that we were playing
at funerals, and that I was the corpse and itself was the winding-sheet.
When it found that this was not the idea, it hit me over the head with
the boom, and refused to do anything.
"Wet it," said Hector; "drop it over and get it wet."
He said people in ships always wetted the sails before they put them up.
So I wetted it; but that only made matters worse than they were before.
A dry sail clinging to your legs and wrapping itself round your head is
not pleasant, but, when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.
We did get the thing up at last, the two of us together. We fixed it,
not exactly upside down - more sideways like - and we tied it up to the
mast with the painter, which we cut off for the purpose.
That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not
upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the
matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory
explanation of the phenomenon.
Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy
of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the
conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had
come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to
disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.
By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed to keep
inside the boat, but it was exhausting work. Hector said that pirates
and other seafaring people generally lashed the rudder to something or
other, and hauled in the main top-jib, during severe squalls, and thought
we ought to try to do something of the kind; but I was for letting her
have her head to the wind.
As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended by adopting it,
and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her her head.
The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I have never
sailed at since, and don't want to again. Then, at a bend, she heeled
over till half her sail was under water. Then she righted herself by a
miracle and flew for a long low bank of soft mud.
That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way into the middle of it
and then stuck.
