Dear me,
it's really a most remarkable thing."
And then he went on, and told us how it had taken him half an hour to
land it, and how it had broken his rod. He said he had weighed it
carefully when he reached home, and it had turned the scale at thirty-
four pounds.
He went in his turn, and when he was gone, the landlord came in to us.
We told him the various histories we had heard about his trout, and he
was immensely amused, and we all laughed very heartily.
"Fancy Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and old Billy Maunders all
telling you that they had caught it. Ha! ha! ha! Well, that is good,"
said the honest old fellow, laughing heartily. "Yes, they are the sort
to give it ME, to put up in MY parlour, if THEY had caught it, they are!
Ha! ha! ha!"
And then he told us the real history of the fish. It seemed that he had
caught it himself, years ago, when he was quite a lad; not by any art or
skill, but by that unaccountable luck that appears to always wait upon a
boy when he plays the wag from school, and goes out fishing on a sunny
afternoon, with a bit of string tied on to the end of a tree.
He said that bringing home that trout had saved him from a whacking, and
that even his school-master had said it was worth the rule-of-three and
practice put together.
He was called out of the room at this point, and George and I again
turned our gaze upon the fish.
It really was a most astonishing trout. The more we looked at it, the
more we marvelled at it.
It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of a chair to
get a better view of it.
And then the chair slipped, and George clutched wildly at the trout-case
to save himself, and down it came with a crash, George and the chair on
top of it.
"You haven't injured the fish, have you?" I cried in alarm, rushing up.
"I hope not," said George, rising cautiously and looking about.
But he had. That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments - I say a
thousand, but they may have only been nine hundred. I did not count
them.
We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should break
up into little pieces like that.
And so it would have been strange and unaccountable, if it had been a
stuffed trout, but it was not.
That trout was plaster-of-Paris.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LOCKS. - GEORGE AND I ARE PHOTOGRAPHED. - WALLINGFORD. - DORCHESTER. -
ABINGDON. - A FAMILY MAN. - A GOOD SPOT FOR DROWNING. - A DIFFICULT BIT
OF WATER. - DEMORALIZING EFFECT OF RIVER AIR.
WE left Streatley early the next morning, and pulled up to Culham, and
slept under the canvas, in the backwater there.
The river is not extraordinarily interesting between Streatley and
Wallingford. From Cleve you get a stretch of six and a half miles
without a lock. I believe this is the longest uninterrupted stretch
anywhere above Teddington, and the Oxford Club make use of it for their
trial eights.
But however satisfactory this absence of locks may be to rowing-men, it
is to be regretted by the mere pleasure-seeker.
For myself, I am fond of locks. They pleasantly break the monotony of
the pull. I like sitting in the boat and slowly rising out of the cool
depths up into new reaches and fresh views; or sinking down, as it were,
out of the world, and then waiting, while the gloomy gates creak, and the
narrow strip of day-light between them widens till the fair smiling river
lies full before you, and you push your little boat out from its brief
prison on to the welcoming waters once again.
They are picturesque little spots, these locks. The stout old lock-
keeper, or his cheerful-looking wife, or bright-eyed daughter, are
pleasant folk to have a passing chat with. * You meet other boats there,
and river gossip is exchanged. The Thames would not be the fairyland it
is without its flower-decked locks.
* Or rather WERE. The Conservancy of late seems to have constituted
itself into a society for the employment of idiots. A good many of the
new lock-keepers, especially in the more crowded portions of the river,
are excitable, nervous old men, quite unfitted for their post.
Talking of locks reminds me of an accident George and I very nearly had
one summer's morning at Hampton Court.
It was a glorious day, and the lock was crowded; and, as is a common
practice up the river, a speculative photographer was taking a picture of
us all as we lay upon the rising waters.
I did not catch what was going on at first, and was, therefore, extremely
surprised at noticing George hurriedly smooth out his trousers, ruffle up
his hair, and stick his cap on in a rakish manner at the back of his
head, and then, assuming an expression of mingled affability and sadness,
sit down in a graceful attitude, and try to hide his feet.
My first idea was that he had suddenly caught sight of some girl he knew,
and I looked about to see who it was. Everybody in the lock seemed to
have been suddenly struck wooden. They were all standing or sitting
about in the most quaint and curious attitudes I have ever seen off a
Japanese fan. All the girls were smiling. Oh, they did look so sweet!
And all the fellows were frowning, and looking stern and noble.
And then, at last, the truth flashed across me, and I wondered if I
should be in time. Ours was the first boat, and it would be unkind of me
to spoil the man's picture, I thought.
