<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
<p class="gutsumm">Our first night.—Under canvas.—An
appeal for help.—Contrariness of tea-kettles, how to
overcome.—Supper.—How to feel virtuous.—Wanted!
a comfortably-appointed, well-drained desert island,
neighbourhood of South Pacific Ocean preferred.—Funny thing
that happened to George’s father.—a restless
night.</p>
<p>Harris and I began to think that Bell Weir lock must have been
done away with after the same manner. George had towed us
up to Staines, and we had taken the boat from there, and it
seemed that we were dragging fifty tons after us, and were
walking forty miles. It was half-past seven when we were
through, and we all got in, and sculled up close to the left
bank, looking out for a spot to haul up in.</p>
<p>We had originally intended to go on to Magna Charta Island, a
sweetly pretty part of the river, where it winds through a soft,
green valley, and to camp in one of the many picturesque inlets
to be found round that tiny shore. But, somehow, we did not
feel that we yearned for the picturesque nearly so much now as we
had earlier in the day. A bit of water between a coal-barge
and a gas-works would have quite satisfied us for that
night. We did not want scenery. We wanted to have our
supper and go to bed. However, we did pull up to the
point—“Picnic Point,” it is called—and
dropped into a very pleasant nook under a great elm-tree, to the
spreading roots of which we fastened the boat.</p>
<p>Then we thought we were going to have supper (we had dispensed
with tea, so as to save time), but George said no; that we had
better get the canvas up first, before it got quite dark, and
while we could see what we were doing. Then, he said, all
our work would be done, and we could sit down to eat with an easy
mind.</p>
<p>That canvas wanted more putting up than I think any of us had
bargained for. It looked so simple in the abstract.
You took five iron arches, like gigantic croquet hoops, and
fitted them up over the boat, and then stretched the canvas over
them, and fastened it down: it would take quite ten minutes, we
thought.</p>
<p>That was an under-estimate.</p>
<p>We took up the hoops, and began to drop them into the sockets
placed for them. You would not imagine this to be dangerous
work; but, looking back now, the wonder to me is that any of us
are alive to tell the tale. They were not hoops, they were
demons. First they would not fit into their sockets at all,
and we had to jump on them, and kick them, and hammer at them
with the boat-hook; and, when they were in, it turned out that
they were the wrong hoops for those particular sockets, and they
had to come out again.</p>
<p>But they would not come out, until two of us had gone and
struggled with them for five minutes, when they would jump up
suddenly, and try and throw us into the water and drown us.
They had hinges in the middle, and, when we were not looking,
they nipped us with these hinges in delicate parts of the body;
and, while we were wrestling with one side of the hoop, and
endeavouring to persuade it to do its duty, the other side would
come behind us in a cowardly manner, and hit us over the
head.</p>
<p>We got them fixed at last, and then all that was to be done
was to arrange the covering over them. George unrolled it,
and fastened one end over the nose of the boat. Harris
stood in the middle to take it from George and roll it on to me,
and I kept by the stern to receive it. It was a long time
coming down to me. George did his part all right, but it
was new work to Harris, and he bungled it.</p>
<p>How he managed it I do not know, he could not explain himself;
but by some mysterious process or other he succeeded, after ten
minutes of superhuman effort, in getting himself completely
rolled up in it. He was so firmly wrapped round and tucked
in and folded over, that he could not get out. He, of
course, made frantic struggles for freedom—the birthright
of every Englishman,—and, in doing so (I learned this
afterwards), knocked over George; and then George, swearing at
Harris, began to struggle too, and got <i>himself</i> entangled
and rolled up.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p151b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatleft' alt= "Watching and waiting" title= "Watching and waiting" src="images/p151s.jpg" /></SPAN>I knew nothing about all this at the time. I did not
understand the business at all myself. I had been told to
stand where I was, and wait till the canvas came to me, and
Montmorency and I stood there and waited, both as good as
gold. We could see the canvas being violently jerked and
tossed about, pretty considerably; but we supposed this was part
of the method, and did not interfere.</p>
<p>We also heard much smothered language coming from underneath
it, and we guessed that they were finding the job rather
troublesome, and concluded that we would wait until things had
got a little simpler before we joined in.</p>
<p>We waited some time, but matters seemed to get only more and
more involved, until, at last, George’s head came wriggling
out over the side of the boat, and spoke up.</p>
<p>It said:</p>
<p>“Give us a hand here, can’t you, you cuckoo;
standing there like a stuffed mummy, when you see we are both
being suffocated, you dummy!”</p>
<p>I never could withstand an appeal for help, so I went and
undid them; not before it was time, either, for Harris was nearly
black in the face.</p>
<p>It took us half an hour’s hard labour, after that,
before it was properly up, and then we cleared the decks, and got
out supper. We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of
the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no
notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out.</p>
<p>That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the
river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are
anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and
begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at
all. You must not even look round at it. Then you
will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.</p>
<p>It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk
very loudly to each other about how you don’t need any tea,
and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so
that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, “I
don’t want any tea; do you, George?” to which George
shouts back, “Oh, no, I don’t like tea; we’ll
have lemonade instead—tea’s so
indigestible.” Upon which the kettle boils over, and
puts the stove out.</p>
<p>We adopted this harmless bit of trickery, and the result was
that, by the time everything else was ready, the tea was
waiting. Then we lit the lantern, and squatted down to
supper.</p>
<p>We wanted that supper.</p>
<p>For five-and-thirty minutes not a sound was heard throughout
the length and breadth of that boat, save the clank of cutlery
and crockery, and the steady grinding of four sets of
molars. At the end of five-and-thirty minutes, Harris said,
“Ah!” and took his left leg out from under him and
put his right one there instead.</p>
<p>Five minutes afterwards, George said, “Ah!” too,
and threw his plate out on the bank; and, three minutes later
than that, Montmorency gave the first sign of contentment he had
exhibited since we had started, and rolled over on his side, and
spread his legs out; and then I said, “Ah!” and bent
my head back, and bumped it against one of the hoops, but I did
not mind it. I did not even swear.</p>
<p>How good one feels when one is full—how satisfied with
ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it,
tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and
contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well,
and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels so
forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested
meal—so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.</p>
<p>It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our
digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless
our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our
passions. After eggs and bacon, it says,
“Work!” After beefsteak and porter, it says,
“Sleep!” After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for
each cup, and don’t let it stand more than three minutes),
it says to the brain, “Now, rise, and show your
strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a
clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of
quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling
world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the
gates of eternity!”</p>
<p>After hot muffins, it says, “Be dull and soulless, like
a beast of the field—a brainless animal, with listless eye,
unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or
life.” And after brandy, taken in sufficient
quantity, it says, “Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that
your fellow-men may laugh—drivel in folly, and splutter in
senseless sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor man
whose wit and will are drowned, like kittens, side by side, in
half an inch of alcohol.”</p>
<p>We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach.
Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch
vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and
judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign
within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you
will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender
father—a noble, pious man.</p>
<p>Before our supper, Harris and George and I were quarrelsome
and snappy and ill-tempered; after our supper, we sat and beamed
on one another, and we beamed upon the dog, too. We loved
each other, we loved everybody. Harris, in moving about,
trod on George’s corn. Had this happened before
supper, George would have expressed wishes and desires concerning
Harris’s fate in this world and the next that would have
made a thoughtful man shudder.</p>
<p>As it was, he said: “Steady, old man; ’ware
wheat.”</p>
<p>And Harris, instead of merely observing, in his most
unpleasant tones, that a fellow could hardly help treading on
some bit of George’s foot, if he had to move about at all
within ten yards of where George was sitting, suggesting that
George never ought to come into an ordinary sized boat with feet
that length, and advising him to hang them over the side, as he
would have done before supper, now said: “Oh, I’m so
sorry, old chap; I hope I haven’t hurt you.”</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p156b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatleft' alt= "Smoking pipes" title= "Smoking pipes" src="images/p156s.jpg" /></SPAN>And George said: “Not at all;” that it was his
fault; and Harris said no, it was his.</p>
<p>It was quite pretty to hear them.</p>
<p>We lit our pipes, and sat, looking out on the quiet night, and
talked.</p>
<p>George said why could not we be always like this—away
from the world, with its sin and temptation, leading sober,
peaceful lives, and doing good. I said it was the sort of
thing I had often longed for myself; and we discussed the
possibility of our going away, we four, to some handy,
well-fitted desert island, and living there in the woods.</p>
<p>Harris said that the danger about desert islands, as far as he
had heard, was that they were so damp: but George said no, not if
properly drained.</p>
<p>And then we got on to drains, and that put George in mind of a
very funny thing that happened to his father once. He said
his father was travelling with another fellow through Wales, and,
one night, they stopped at a little inn, where there were some
other fellows, and they joined the other fellows, and spent the
evening with them.</p>
<p>They had a very jolly evening, and sat up late, and, by the
time they came to go to bed, they (this was when George’s
father was a very young man) were slightly jolly, too. They
(George’s father and George’s father’s friend)
were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds. They
took the candle, and went up. The candle lurched up against
the wall when they got into the room, and went out, and they had
to undress and grope into bed in the dark. This they did;
but, instead of getting into separate beds, as they thought they
were doing, they both climbed into the same one without knowing
it—one getting in with his head at the top, and the other
crawling in from the opposite side of the compass, and lying with
his feet on the pillow.</p>
<p>There was silence for a moment, and then George’s father
said:</p>
<p>“Joe!”</p>
<p>“What’s the matter, Tom?” replied
Joe’s voice from the other end of the bed.</p>
<p>“Why, there’s a man in my bed,” said
George’s father; “here’s his feet on my
pillow.”</p>
<p>“Well, it’s an extraordinary thing, Tom,”
answered the other; “but I’m blest if there
isn’t a man in my bed, too!”</p>
<p>“What are you going to do?” asked George’s
father.</p>
<p>“Well, I’m going to chuck him out,” replied
Joe.</p>
<p>“So am I,” said George’s father,
valiantly.</p>
<p>There was a brief struggle, followed by two heavy bumps on the
floor, and then a rather doleful voice said:</p>
<p>“I say, Tom!”</p>
<p>“Yes!”</p>
<p>“How have you got on?”</p>
<p>“Well, to tell you the truth, my man’s chucked
<i>me</i> out.”</p>
<p>“So’s mine! I say, I don’t think much
of this inn, do you?”</p>
<p>“What was the name of that inn?” said Harris.</p>
<p>“The Pig and Whistle,” said George.
“Why?”</p>
<p>“Ah, no, then it isn’t the same,” replied
Harris.</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” queried George.</p>
<p>“Why it’s so curious,” murmured Harris,
“but precisely that very same thing happened to <i>my</i>
father once at a country inn. I’ve often heard him
tell the tale. I thought it might have been the same
inn.”</p>
<p>We turned in at ten that night, and I thought I should sleep
well, being tired; but I didn’t. As a rule, I undress
and put my head on the pillow, and then somebody bangs at the
door, and says it is half-past eight: but, to-night, everything
seemed against me; the novelty of it all, the hardness of the
boat, the cramped position (I was lying with my feet under one
seat, and my head on another), the sound of the lapping water
round the boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me restless
and disturbed.</p>
<p>I did get to sleep for a few hours, and then some part of the
boat which seemed to have grown up in the night—for it
certainly was not there when we started, and it had disappeared
by the morning—kept digging into my spine. I slept
through it for a while, dreaming that I had swallowed a
sovereign, and that they were cutting a hole in my back with a
gimlet, so as to try and get it out. I thought it very
unkind of them, and I told them I would owe them the money, and
they should have it at the end of the month. But they would
not hear of that, and said it would be much better if they had it
then, because otherwise the interest would accumulate so. I
got quite cross with them after a bit, and told them what I
thought of them, and then they gave the gimlet such an
excruciating wrench that I woke up.</p>
<p>The boat seemed stuffy, and my head ached; so I thought I
would step out into the cool night-air. I slipped on what
clothes I could find about—some of my own, and some of
George’s and Harris’s—and crept under the
canvas on to the bank.</p>
<p>It was a glorious night. The moon had sunk, and left the
quiet earth alone with the stars. It seemed as if, in the
silence and the hush, while we her children slept, they were
talking with her, their sister—conversing of mighty
mysteries in voices too vast and deep for childish human ears to
catch the sound.</p>
<p>They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We
are as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit
temple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not;
and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the
shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see some
awful vision hovering there.</p>
<p>And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the
night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away,
ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our
hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the
world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like
some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered
head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and
smiles; and, though she does not speak, we know what she would
say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the
pain is gone.</p>
<p>Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before
her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only
a moan. Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she
cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the
little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and,
borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier
Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great
Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know
that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.</p>
<p>Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look upon
that wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak of
it, or tell the mystery they know.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, through a strange country, there rode some
goodly knights, and their path lay by a deep wood, where tangled
briars grew very thick and strong, and tore the flesh of them
that lost their way therein. And the leaves of the trees
that grew in the wood were very dark and thick, so that no ray of
light came through the branches to lighten the gloom and
sadness.</p>
<p>And, as they passed by that dark wood, one knight of those
that rode, missing his comrades, wandered far away, and returned
to them no more; and they, sorely grieving, rode on without him,
mourning him as one dead.</p>
<p>Now, when they reached the fair castle towards which they had
been journeying, they stayed there many days, and made merry; and
one night, as they sat in cheerful ease around the logs that
burned in the great hall, and drank a loving measure, there came
the comrade they had lost, and greeted them. His clothes
were ragged, like a beggar’s, and many sad wounds were on
his sweet flesh, but upon his face there shone a great radiance
of deep joy.</p>
<p>And they questioned him, asking him what had befallen him: and
he told them how in the dark wood he had lost his way, and had
wandered many days and nights, till, torn and bleeding, he had
lain him down to die.</p>
<p>Then, when he was nigh unto death, lo! through the savage
gloom there came to him a stately maiden, and took him by the
hand and led him on through devious paths, unknown to any man,
until upon the darkness of the wood there dawned a light such as
the light of day was unto but as a little lamp unto the sun; and,
in that wondrous light, our way-worn knight saw as in a dream a
vision, and so glorious, so fair the vision seemed, that of his
bleeding wounds he thought no more, but stood as one entranced,
whose joy is deep as is the sea, whereof no man can tell the
depth.</p>
<p>And the vision faded, and the knight, kneeling upon the
ground, thanked the good saint who into that sad wood had strayed
his steps, so he had seen the vision that lay there hid.</p>
<p>And the name of the dark forest was Sorrow; but of the vision
that the good knight saw therein we may not speak nor tell.</p>
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