Three Men in a Boat | Page 9

of helping you, it
seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you
get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and
spoils it all.
"Here! what are you up to?" you call out.
"What are YOU up to?" he retorts; "leggo, can't you?"
"Don't pull it; you've got it all wrong, you stupid ass!" you shout.
"No, I haven't," he yells back; "let go your side!"
"I tell you you've got it all wrong!" you roar, wishing that you could get
at him; and you give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out.
"Ah, the bally idiot!" you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a
savage haul, and away goes your side. You lay down the mallet and
start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business,
and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and
explain his views to you. And you follow each other round and round,
swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, and
leaves you looking at each other across its ruins, when you both
indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:
"There you are! what did I tell you?"
Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out the boat, and who
has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to
himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know what the

thundering blazes you're playing at, and why the blarmed tent isn't up
yet.
At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the things. It is
hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so you light the methylated
spirit stove, and crowd round that.
Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The bread is two- thirds
rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly rich in it, and the jam, and
the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to
make soup.
After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot smoke.
Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers and inebriates, if taken
in proper quantity, and this restores to you sufficient interest in life to
induce you to go to bed.
There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest,
and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom
of the sea - the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom. You
wake up and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened.
Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then
you think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, or
else fire, and this opinion you express in the usual method. No help
comes, however, and all you know is that thousands of people are
kicking you, and you are being smothered.
Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint cries
coming from underneath your bed. Determining, at all events, to sell
your life dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with
arms and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives
way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly
observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are
preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to
dawn upon you that it's Jim.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he says, recognising you at the same moment.

"Yes," you answer, rubbing your eyes; "what's happened?"
"Bally tent's blown down, I think," he says.
"Where's Bill?"
Then you both raise up your voices and shout for "Bill!" and the ground
beneath you heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that you heard
before replies from out the ruin:
"Get off my head, can't you?"
And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an
unnecessarily aggressive mood - he being under the evident belief that
the whole thing has been done on purpose.
In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having caught
severe colds in the night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you
swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast
time.
We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights; and hotel
it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks, when it was wet, or
when we felt inclined for a change.
Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval. He does not
revel in romantic solitude. Give him something noisy; and if a trifle
low, so much the jollier. To look at Montmorency you would imagine
that he was an angel sent upon