Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), Jerome K. Jerome [best love novels of all time TXT] 📗

The interview is, however, extremely brief, most of the conversation being on his part, your remarks being mostly of an exclamatory and mono-syllabic order, and as soon as you can tear yourself away you do so.

I devoted some three months to rafting, and, being then as proficient as there was any need to be at that branch of the art, I determined to go in for rowing proper, and joined one of the Lea boating clubs.

Being out in a boat on the river Lea, especially on Saturday afternoons, soon makes you smart at handling a craft, and spry at escaping being run down by roughs or swamped by barges; and it also affords plenty of opportunity for acquiring the most prompt and graceful method of lying down flat at the bottom of the boat so as to avoid being chucked out into the river by passing tow-lines.

But it does not give you style.  It was not till I came to the Thames that I got style.  My style of rowing is very much admired now.  People say it is so quaint.

George never went near the water until he was sixteen.  Then he and eight other gentlemen of about the same age went down in a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them it was jolly fun, boating!

The tide was running out pretty rapidly when they reached the landing-stage, and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the river, but this did not trouble them at all, and they proceeded to select their boat.

There was an eight-oared racing outrigger drawn up on the stage; that was the one that took their fancy.  They said they’d have that one, please.  The boatman was away, and only his boy was in charge.  The boy tried to damp their ardour for the outrigger, and showed them two or three very comfortable-looking boats of the family-party build, but those would not do at all; the outrigger was the boat they thought they would look best in.

So the boy launched it, and they took off their coats and prepared to take their seats.  The boy suggested that George, who, even in those days, was always the heavy man of any party, should be number four.  George said he should be happy to be number four, and promptly stepped into bow’s place, and sat down with his back to the stern.  They got him into his proper position at last, and then the others followed.

A particularly nervous boy was appointed cox, and the steering principle explained to him by Joskins.  Joskins himself took stroke.  He told the others that it was simple enough; all they had to do was to follow him.

They said they were ready, and the boy on the landing stage took a boat-hook and shoved him off.

What then followed George is unable to describe in detail.  He has a confused recollection of having, immediately on starting, received a violent blow in the small of the back from the butt-end of number five’s scull, at the same time that his own seat seemed to disappear from under him by magic, and leave him sitting on the boards.  He also noticed, as a curious circumstance, that number two was at the same instant lying on his back at the bottom of the boat, with his legs in the air, apparently in a fit.

They passed under Kew Bridge, broadside, at the rate of eight miles an hour. Joskins being the only one who was rowing.  George, on recovering his seat, tried to help him, but, on dipping his oar into the water, it immediately, to his intense surprise, disappeared under the boat, and nearly took him with it.

And then “cox” threw both rudder lines over-board, and burst into tears.

How they got back George never knew, but it took them just forty minutes.  A dense crowd watched the entertainment from Kew Bridge with much interest, and everybody shouted out to them different directions.  Three times they managed to get the boat back through the arch, and three times they were carried under it again, and every time “cox” looked up and saw the bridge above him he broke out into renewed sobs.

George said he little thought that afternoon that he should ever come to really like boating.

Harris is more accustomed to sea rowing than to river work, and says that, as an exercise, he prefers it.  I don’t.  I remember taking a small boat out at Eastbourne last summer: I used to do a good deal of sea rowing years ago, and I thought I should be all right; but I found I had forgotten the art entirely.  When one scull was deep down underneath the water, the other would be flourishing wildly about in the air.  To get a grip of the water with both at the same time I had to stand up.  The parade was crowded with nobility and gentry, and I had to pull past them in this ridiculous fashion.  I landed half-way down the beach, and secured the services of an old boatman to take me back.

I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who has been hired by the hour.  There is something so beautifully calm and restful about his method.  It is so free from that fretful haste, that vehement striving, that is every day becoming more and more the bane of nineteenth-century life.  He is not for ever straining himself to pass all the other boats.  If another boat overtakes him and passes him it does not annoy him; as a matter of fact, they all do overtake him and pass him—all those that are going his way.  This would trouble and irritate some people; the sublime equanimity of the hired boatman under the ordeal affords us a beautiful lesson against ambition and uppishness.

Plain practical rowing of the get-the-boat-along order is not a very difficult art to acquire, but it takes a good deal of practice before a man feels comfortable, when rowing past girls.  It is the “time” that worries a youngster.  “It’s jolly funny,” he says, as for the twentieth time within five minutes he disentangles his sculls from yours; “I can get on all right when I’m by myself!”

To see two novices try to keep time with one another is very amusing.  Bow finds it impossible to keep pace with stroke, because stroke rows in such an extraordinary fashion.  Stroke is intensely indignant at this, and explains that what he has been endeavouring to do for the last ten minutes is to adapt his method to bow’s limited capacity.  Bow, in turn, then becomes insulted, and requests stroke not to trouble his head about him (bow), but to devote his mind to setting a sensible stroke.

“Or, shall I take stroke?” he adds, with the evident idea that that would at once put the whole matter right.

They splash along for another hundred yards with still moderate success, and then the whole secret of their trouble bursts upon stroke like a flash of inspiration.

“I tell you what it is: you’ve got my sculls,” he cries, turning to bow; “pass yours over.”

“Well, do you know, I’ve been wondering how it was I couldn’t get on with these,” answers bow, quite brightening up, and most willingly assisting in the exchange.  “Now we shall be all right.”

But they are not—not even then.  Stroke has to stretch his arms nearly out of their sockets to reach his sculls now; while bow’s pair, at each recovery, hit him a violent blow in the chest.  So they change back again, and come to the conclusion that the man has given them the wrong set altogether; and over their mutual abuse of this man they become quite friendly and sympathetic.

George said he had often longed to take to punting for a change.  Punting is not as easy as it looks.  As in rowing, you soon learn how to get along and handle the craft, but it takes long practice before you can do this with dignity and without getting the water all up your sleeve.

One young man I knew had a very sad accident happen to him the first time he went punting.  He had been getting on so well that he had grown quite cheeky over the business, and was walking up and down the punt, working his pole with a careless grace that was quite fascinating to watch.  Up he would march to the head of the punt, plant his pole, and then run along right to the other end, just like an old punter.  Oh! it was grand.

And it would all have gone on being grand if he had not unfortunately, while looking round to enjoy the scenery, taken just one step more than there was any necessity for, and walked off the punt altogether.  The pole was firmly fixed in the mud, and he was left clinging to it while the punt drifted away.  It was an undignified position for him.  A rude boy on the bank immediately yelled out to a lagging chum to “hurry up and see a real monkey on a stick.”

I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck would have it, we had not taken the proper precaution to bring out a spare pole with us.  I could only sit and look at him.  His expression as the pole slowly sank with him I shall never forget; there was so much thought in it.

I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw him scramble out, sad and wet.  I could not help laughing, he looked such a ridiculous figure.  I continued to chuckle to myself about it for some time, and then it was suddenly forced in upon me that really I had got very little to laugh at when I came to think of it.  Here was I, alone in a punt, without a pole, drifting helplessly down mid-stream—possibly towards a weir.

I began to feel very indignant with my friend for having stepped overboard and gone off in that way.  He might, at all events, have left me the pole.

I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came in sight of a fishing-punt moored in mid-stream, in which sat two old fishermen.  They saw me bearing down upon them, and they called out to me to keep out of their way.

“I can’t,” I shouted back.

“But you don’t try,” they answered.

I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and they caught me and lent me a pole.  The weir was just fifty yards below.  I am glad they happened to be there.

The first time I went punting was in company with three other fellows; they were going to show me how to do it.  We could not all start together, so I said I would go down first and get out the punt, and then I could potter about and practice a bit until they came.

I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were all engaged; so I had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank, watching the river, and waiting for my friends.

I had not been sitting there long before my attention became attracted to a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise, wore a jacket and cap exactly like mine.  He was evidently a novice at punting, and his performance was most interesting.  You never knew what was going to happen when he put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself.  Sometimes he shot up stream and sometimes he shot down stream, and at other times he simply spun round and came up the other side of the pole.  And with every result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed.

The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in him after a while, and to make bets with one another as to what would be the outcome of his next push.

In the course of time my friends arrived on the opposite bank, and they stopped and watched him too.  His back was towards them, and they only saw his jacket and cap.  From this they immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was I, their beloved companion, who was making an exhibition of himself, and their delight knew no bounds.  They commenced to chaff him unmercifully.

I did not grasp their mistake at first, and I thought, “How rude of them to go on like that, with a perfect stranger, too!”  But before I could call out and reprove them, the explanation of the matter occurred to me, and I withdrew behind a tree.

Oh, how they enjoyed themselves, ridiculing that young man!  For five good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him,