"Steam launch, coming!" one of us would cry out, on sighting the enemy in
the distance; and, in an instant, everything was got ready to receive
her. I would take the lines, and Harris and George would sit down beside
me, all of us with our backs to the launch, and the boat would drift out
quietly into mid-stream.
On would come the launch, whistling, and on we would go, drifting. At
about a hundred yards off, she would start whistling like mad, and the
people would come and lean over the side, and roar at us; but we never
heard them! Harris would be telling us an anecdote about his mother, and
George and I would not have missed a word of it for worlds.
Then that launch would give one final shriek of a whistle that would
nearly burst the boiler, and she would reverse her engines, and blow off
steam, and swing round and get aground; everyone on board of it would
rush to the bow and yell at us, and the people on the bank would stand
and shout to us, and all the other passing boats would stop and join in,
till the whole river for miles up and down was in a state of frantic
commotion. And then Harris would break off in the most interesting part
of his narrative, and look up with mild surprise, and say to George:
"Why, George, bless me, if here isn't a steam launch!"
And George would answer:
"Well, do you know, I THOUGHT I heard something!"
Upon which we would get nervous and confused, and not know how to get the
boat out of the way, and the people in the launch would crowd round and
instruct us:
"Pull your right - you, you idiot! back with your left. No, not YOU -
the other one - leave the lines alone, can't you - now, both together.
NOT THAT way. Oh, you - !"
Then they would lower a boat and come to our assistance; and, after
quarter of an hour's effort, would get us clean out of their way, so that
they could go on; and we would thank them so much, and ask them to give
us a tow. But they never would.
Another good way we discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of
steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and ask them if they
were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the Bermondsey Good Templars, and could they
lend us a saucepan.
Old ladies, not accustomed to the river, are always intensely nervous of
steam launches. I remember going up once from Staines to Windsor - a
stretch of water peculiarly rich in these mechanical monstrosities - with
a party containing three ladies of this description.
