GEORGE IS INTRODUCED TO WORK. - HEATHENISH INSTINCTS OF TOW-LINES. -UNGRATEFUL CONDUCT OF A DOUBLE-SCULLING SKIFF. - TOWERS AND TOWED. - AUSE DISCOVERED FOR LOVERS. - STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF AN ELDERLY LADY. -MUCH HASTE, LESS SPEED. - BEING TOWED BY GIRLS: EXCITING SENSATION. - THEMISSING LOCK OR THE HAUNTED RIVER. - MUSIC. - SAVED!
WE made George work, now we had got him. He did not want to work, ofcourse; that goes without saying. He had had a hard time in the City, sohe explained. Harris, who is callous in his nature, and not prone topity, said:
"Ah! and now you are going to have a hard time on the river for a change;change is good for everyone. Out you get!"He could not in conscience - not even George's conscience - object,though he did suggest that, perhaps, it would be better for him to stopin the boat, and get tea ready, while Harris and I towed, because gettingtea was such a worrying work, and Harris and I looked tired. The onlyreply we made to this, however, was to pass him over the tow-line, and hetook it, and stepped out.
There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line. Youroll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up anew pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up,it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.
I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took anaverage tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of afield, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when youlooked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in aheap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tieditself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and itwould take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass andswearing all the while, to disentangle it again.
That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there may behonourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may betow-lines that are a credit to their profession - conscientious,respectable tow-lines - tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant theyare left to themselves. I say there MAY be such tow-lines; I sincerelyhope there are. But I have not met with them.
This tow-line I had taken in myself just before we had got to the lock.
I would not let Harris touch it, because he is careless. I had looped itround slowly and cautiously, and tied it up in the middle, and folded itin two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat. Harris hadlifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George's hand. Georgehad taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had begun to unravelit as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a new-born infant; and,before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly-madedoor-mat than anything else.
It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always goes on inconnection with it. The man on the bank, who is trying to disentangleit, thinks all the fault lies with the man who rolled it up; and when aman up the river thinks a thing, he says it.
"What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net of it?
You've made a nice mess you have; why couldn't you wind it up properly,you silly dummy?" he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildly withit, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round and round it,trying to find the end.
On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole cause of themuddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.
"It was all right when you took it!" he exclaims indignantly. "Why don'tyou think what you are doing? You go about things in such a slap-dashstyle. You'd get a scaffolding pole entangled you would!"And they feel so angry with one another that they would like to hang eachother with the thing.
Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives a yell and goes mad, anddances on the rope, and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold of thefirst piece that comes to his hand and hauling at it. Of course, thisonly gets it into a tighter tangle than ever. Then the second man climbsout of the boat and comes to help him, and they get in each other's way,and hinder one another. They both get hold of the same bit of line, andpull at it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught. In theend, they do get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat hasdrifted off, and is making straight for the weir.
This really happened once to my own knowledge. It was up by Boveney, onerather windy morning. We were pulling down stream, and, as we came roundthe bend, we noticed a couple of men on the bank. They were looking ateach other with as bewildered and helplessly miserable expression as Ihave ever witnessed on any human countenance before or since, and theyheld a long tow-line between them. It was clear that something hadhappened, so we eased up and asked them what was the matter.
"Why, our boat's gone off!" they replied in an indignant tone. "We justgot out to disentangle the tow-line, and when we looked round, it wasgone!"And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a mean andungrateful act on the part of the boat.
We found the truant for them half a mile further down, held by somerushes, and we brought it back to them. I bet they did not give thatboat another chance for a week.
I shall never forget the picture of those two men walking up and down thebank with a tow-line, looking for their boat.
One sees a good many funny incidents up the river in connection withtowing. One of the most common is the sight of a couple of towers,walking briskly along, deep in an animated discussion, while the man inthe boat, a hundred yards behind them, is vainly shrieking to them tostop, and making frantic signs of distress with a scull. Something hasgone wrong; the rudder has come off, or the boat-hook has slippedoverboard, or his hat has dropped into the water and is floating rapidlydown stream.
He calls to them to stop, quite gently and politely at first.
"Hi! stop a minute, will you?" he shouts cheerily. "I've dropped my hatover-board."Then: "Hi! Tom - Dick! can't you hear?" not quite so affably this time.
Then: "Hi! Confound YOU, you dunder-headed idiots! Hi! stop! Oh you -!"After that he springs up, and dances about, and roars himself red in theface, and curses everything he knows. And the small boys on the bankstop and jeer at him, and pitch stones at him as he is pulled along pastthem, at the rate of four miles an hour, and can't get out.
Much of this sort of trouble would be saved if those who are towing wouldkeep remembering that they are towing, and give a pretty frequent lookround to see how their man is getting on. It is best to let one persontow. When two are doing it, they get chattering, and forget, and theboat itself, offering, as it does, but little resistance, is of no realservice in reminding them of the fact.
As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can be to theirwork, George told us, later on in the evening, when we were discussingthe subject after supper, of a very curious instance.
He and three other men, so he said, were sculling a very heavily ladenboat up from Maidenhead one evening, and a little above Cookham lock theynoticed a fellow and a girl, walking along the towpath, both deep in anapparently interesting and absorbing conversation. They were carrying aboat-hook between them, and, attached to the boat-hook was a tow-line,which trailed behind them, its end in the water. No boat was near, noboat was in sight. There must have been a boat attached to that tow-lineat some time or other, that was certain; but what had become of it, whatghastly fate had overtaken it, and those who had been left in it, wasburied in mystery. Whatever the accident may have been, however, it hadin no way disturbed the young lady and gentleman, who were towing. Theyhad the boat-hook and they had the line, and that seemed to be all thatthey thought necessary to their work.
George was about to call out and wake them up, but, at that moment, abright idea flashed across him, and he didn't. He got the hitcherinstead, and reached over, and drew in the end of the tow-line; and theymade a loop in it, and put it over their mast, and then they tidied upthe sculls, and went and sat down in the stern, and lit their pipes.
And that young man and young woman towed those four hulking chaps and aheavy boat up to Marlow.
George said he never saw so much thoughtful sadness concentrated into oneglance before, as when, at the lock, that young couple grasped the ideathat, for the last two miles, they had been towing the wrong boat.
George fancied that, if it had not been for the restraining influence ofthe sweet woman at his side, the young man might have given way toviolent language.
The maiden was the first to recover from her surprise, and, when she did,she clasped her hands, and said, wildly:
"Oh, Henry, then WHERE is auntie?""Did they ever recover the old lady?" asked Harris.
George replied he did not know.
Another example of the dangerous want of sympathy between tower and towedwas witnessed by George and myself once up near Walton. It was where thetow-path shelves gently down into the water, and we were camping on theopposite bank, noticing things in general. By-and-by a small boat camein sight, towed through the water at a tremendous pace by a powerfulbarge horse, on which sat a very small boy. Scattered about the boat, indreamy and reposeful attitudes, lay five fellows, the man who wassteering having a particularly restful appearance.
"I should like to see him pull the wrong line," murmured George, as theypassed. And at that precise moment the man did it, and the boat rushedup the bank with a noise like the ripping up of forty thousand linensheets. Two men, a hamper, and three oars immediately left the boat onthe larboard side, and reclined on the bank, and one and a half momentsafterwards, two other men disembarked from the starboard, and sat downamong boat-hooks and sails and carpet-bags and bottles. The last manw............