And,
before I've said "Oh! Ugh!" and found out what has gone, the wave comes
back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out frantically
for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and
wish I'd been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I
mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me
sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and
find that I've been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop
back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.
In the present instance, we all talked as if we were going to have a long
swim every morning.
George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in the fresh
morning, and plunge into the limpid river. Harris said there was nothing
like a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it always
gave him an appetite. George said that if it was going to make Harris
eat more than Harris ordinarily ate, then he should protest against
Harris having a bath at all.
He said there would be quite enough hard work in towing sufficient food
for Harris up against stream, as it was.
I urged upon George, however, how much pleasanter it would be to have
Harris clean and fresh about the boat, even if we did have to take a few
more hundredweight of provisions; and he got to see it in my light, and
withdrew his opposition to Harris's bath.
Agreed, finally, that we should take THREE bath towels, so as not to keep
each other waiting.
For clothes, George said two suits of flannel would be sufficient, as we
could wash them ourselves, in the river, when they got dirty. We asked
him if he had ever tried washing flannels in the river, and he replied:
"No, not exactly himself like; but he knew some fellows who had, and it
was easy enough;" and Harris and I were weak enough to fancy he knew what
he was talking about, and that three respectable young men, without
position or influence, and with no experience in washing, could really
clean their own shirts and trousers in the river Thames with a bit of
soap.
We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late, that George
was a miserable impostor, who could evidently have known nothing whatever
about the matter. If you had seen these clothes after - but, as the
shilling shockers say, we anticipate.
George impressed upon us to take a change of under-things and plenty of
socks, in case we got upset and wanted a change; also plenty of
handkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and a pair of leather
boots as well as our boating shoes, as we should want them if we got
upset.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FOOD QUESTION. - OBJECTIONS TO PARAFFINE OIL AS AN ATMOSPHERE. -
ADVANTAGES OF CHEESE AS A TRAVELLING COMPANION. - A MARRIED WOMAN DESERTS
HER HOME. - FURTHER PROVISION FOR GETTING UPSET. - I PACK. - CUSSEDNESS
OF TOOTH-BRUSHES. - GEORGE AND HARRIS PACK. - AWFUL BEHAVIOUR OF
MONTMORENCY. - WE RETIRE TO REST.
THEN we discussed the food question. George said:
"Begin with breakfast." (George is so practical.) "Now for breakfast we
shall want a frying-pan" - (Harris said it was indigestible; but we
merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on) - "a tea-pot and a
kettle, and a methylated spirit stove."
"No oil," said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed.
We had taken up an oil-stove once, but "never again." It had been like
living in an oil-shop that week. It oozed. I never saw such a thing as
paraffine oil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from
there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the whole boat and
everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated
the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind
blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a
northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind; but whether it came
from the Arctic snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands, it
came alike to us laden with the fragrance of paraffine oil.
And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams,
they positively reeked of paraffine.
We tried to get away from it at Marlow. We left the boat by the bridge,
and took a walk through the town to escape it, but it followed us. The
whole town was full of oil. We passed through the church-yard, and it
seemed as if the people had been buried in oil. The High Street stunk of
oil; we wondered how people could live in it. And we walked miles upon
miles out Birmingham way; but it was no use, the country was steeped in
oil.
At the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field,
under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath (we had been swearing for a
whole week about the thing in an ordinary, middle-class way, but this was
a swell affair) - an awful oath never to take paraffine oil with us in a
boat again-except, of course, in case of sickness.
Therefore, in the present instance, we confined ourselves to methylated
spirit. Even that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and methylated
cake.
