chapter5_page-90-107

5.

We came in sight of Redding at about 11.

The river is dirty and depressing here.

One does not stay long in the neighborhood of Redding.

At Redding, we met a steam launch that belonged to some friends of mine, and they towed us

up to within a mile of streetly.

It is very delightful being towed by a steam launch.

I prefer it to rowing.

It would have been nicer if so many miserable small boats were not continually getting in

the way of our launch.

It is very annoying when these rowing boats get in the way of one's launch up the river.

Something should be done to stop it.

And they are extremely rude too.

You can whistle until you nearly burst your boiler, but they never hurry.

I would have one or two of them sunk, just to teach them a lesson.

The river becomes lovely from the little above Redding.

The railway spoils the view near Tylehurst, but from Maple Durham to streetly it is wonderful.

My friends' launch left us below Pangborn, and then Harris tried to make me believe

that it was my turn to row the boat.

This seemed unreasonable.

In the morning we had decided that I would bring the boat up to a point three miles above

Redding.

Well, here we were, ten miles above Redding.

Surely it was now their turn.

I could not get George and Harris to understand this, so to end the argument, I took the oars.

Then we came up to a lovely point in the river.

On the left of us was goring, and on the right, streetly.

Both were charming places to stay at for a few days.

We had intended to go on to Wallingford that day, but the sweet smiling face of the river

made us stop here for a while, so we left our boat at the bridge and went up to streetly

for lunch.

Streetly is an ancient place that dates back to British and Saxon times.

In case you want to get away without paying your hotel bill, we stayed two days at streetly

and got our clothes washed.

We had tried washing them ourselves in the river, and it had been a failure.

Before we had washed them our clothes had been very, very dirty, but they were wearable.

After we washed them they were worse.

I can say that the river between Redding and Henley was much cleaner after we washed our

clothes in it.

All the dirt in the river was now collected in our clothes.

The washer woman at streetly said she felt she should charge us three times the usual price

for that wash.

She said it was not like washing, but more like excavating.

We paid the bill without objection.

The neighborhood of streetly and goring is a great fishing center.

There is some excellent fish to eat here.

The river is full of all sorts of fish, pike, roach, dace, dudgeon, and eels, and you can

sit and fish for them all day.

Some people do.

They never catch them.

I have never known anyone catching anything in the Thames except for small, unedible fish

and dead cats.

The local fisherman's guide doesn't say a word about catching anything.

All it says is that the place is a good place for fishing.

The fisherman's guide to the Thames says that Jack and Perch can also be caught here, but

the fisherman's guide is wrong.

Jack and Perch may exist in the river.

You can see them there in large numbers when you are out for a walk along the banks.

They come and stand half out of the water with their mouths wide open for biscuits.

And, if you go in for a swim, they gather round you and get in your way and irritate you.

But they are not to be caught by a little worm on the end of a hook.

I am not a good fisherman myself.

I gave a lot of attention to the subject in the past and thought I was making good progress,

but the old fisherman told me I could never be good at it and advised me to give it up.

They said I could throw the line neatly and had the necessary amount of natural laziness,

but I did not have enough imagination.

They said one needed a lot of imagination to become a Thames fisherman.

Some people believe that to be a good fisherman one needs the ability to tell lies easily,

but this is not true.

Pure lying is useless.

Even a beginner can do that.

Experienced fishermen have something else.

It is in the description, in the amount of detail, and in the air of honesty.

Anybody can come in and say, I caught fifteen dozen perch yesterday, or, last Monday I caught

an eighteen pound dudgeon three feet from head to tail.

There is no art, no skill for that sort of lying.

But the experienced fisherman would never tell a lie like this.

He comes in quietly with his hat on, finds the most comfortable chair,

lights his pipe, and sits in silence.

He lets the young people talk about themselves for a while, and when they pause,

he takes the pipe from his mouth.

Well, I had a good catch on Tuesday evening, but it's not much good my telling you about it, he says.

Oh, why is that, they ask?

Because I don't expect anybody to believe me,

replies the old man calmly as he refills his pipe.

There's a pause after this.

Nobody feels brave enough to contradict the old gentleman,

so he has to continue by himself.

No, he says thoughtfully.

I don't think I would believe it if anybody told it to me.

I had been sitting there all afternoon and had caught nothing.

I was just about to give up hope when I felt a strong pull on the line.

I thought it was a little fish and went to pull it up.

But I could not move it.

It took me half an hour, sir, to bring that fish up.

I thought the line was going to break.

And when I finally got him out at last, what do you think it was?

A sturgeon, a forty pound sturgeon, sir.

Yes, you're right to be surprised.

Can I have another drink, landlord, please?

Then he tells you of the astonishment of everybody who saw it,

and what his wife said, and what the neighbors thought about it.

I once asked the landlord of an inn if he was bothered by the stories that the fisherman told him.

Oh, no, not now, sir, he said.

When I was younger it did surprise me a little.

But me and my wife listened to the stories day and night now.

We're used to it, you know.

I knew a young man once.

He was an honest person.

When he took up fishing he decided to never exaggerate his catches by more than 25%.

When I catch forty fish I will tell people I caught fifty, he said.

But I will not lie more than that because it is sinful to lie.

But the plan did not work out so well.

He was never able to use it.

The greatest number of fish he ever caught was three,

and you can't add twenty -five percent to three, not in fish.

So he increased his percentage to thirty -three and a third,

but that was also too difficult when he caught one or two.

So he decided to just double the quantity.

He used this system for a few months, but was unhappy with it.

Nobody believed him when he told them he had only doubled the number.

When he caught three fish and said he had caught six,

he got jealous of the man who caught one and said he had caught a dozen.

So he made a final change to his system.

He would count each fish that he caught as ten,

and would always begin with ten fish.

For example, if he did not catch any fish he would say he caught ten.

And if by chance he caught one fish, he would say he caught twenty.

When two fish meant thirty, three fish meant forty, and so on.

If you ever have an evening up the river, it is always nice to visit

one of the little village inns and take a seat in the bar.

You will meet one or two old fishermen, and as they sip their drinks,

they will tell you many fishy stories.

Harris had gone out and had a shave early in the afternoon,

and had come back and spent forty minutes polishing his boots.

We had not seen him since.

Therefore George and I and the dog went for a walk to Wallingford

on the second evening.

Coming back, we went into a little riverside inn for a rest.

We sat down at the bar.

There was an old man there, smoking a long clay pipe,

and we naturally began chatting.

He told us it had been a fine day, and we told him it had been a fine

day the day before.

Then we told each other it would probably be a fine day the

following day.

After that we told him we were strangers in the neighborhood

and that we were leaving the next morning.

Then there was a pause in our conversation.

Our eyes wandered around the room.

We saw a dusty old glass case fixed high above the fireplace.

It contained a trout.

I was fascinated by the size of it.

Ahhh! said the old gentleman.

He is a fine fellow, isn't he?

Quite uncommon, I murmured.

George asked the old man how much it weighed.

Eighteen pounds, six ounces, said our friend.

He rose and put on his coat.

Yes, it was sixteen years ago that I caught him.

I caught him just below the bridge.

They told me he was in the river, and I said I'd catch

him, and so I did.

You don't see many fish that size around here.

Good night, gentlemen.

Good night.

He said and went out.

We could not take our eyes off the fish after that.

It was an amazing fish.

We were still looking at it when the local carrier came to the

door of the inn.

And he also looked at the fish.

A good -sized trout, said George, turning to him.

Ah, you may say that, sir, replied the man.

Maybe you weren't here when that fish was caught.

No, we said.

We are strangers in the neighborhood.

Ahhh, said the carrier.

Then, of course, you don't know.

It was nearly five years ago that I caught that trout.

Oh, it was you that caught it then, said I.

Yes, sir, replied the old man.

I caught him just below the bridge one Friday afternoon.

I'd gone out to catch some pike never thinking of a trout.

When I saw that monster on the end of my line, I was shocked.

Well, you see, he weighed twenty -six pounds.

Good night, gentlemen.

Good night.

Five minutes later, a third man came in and described how he had

caught it early one morning and left.

Then, a serious -looking middle -aged man came in and sat down by the window.

None of us spoke for a while.

At last, George turned to him and spoke.

Excuse me, I hope you will forgive our curiosity, but we're complete

strangers in the neighborhood, but my friend and I would be very happy

if you could tell us how you caught that trout up there.

Why, who told you I caught that trout, asked the man in surprise?

We said nobody had told us, but we felt that it was he who had done it.

Well, it is very strange, very strange, answered the man.

Because actually you are right.

I did catch it.

But how could you guess it?

This is very strange.

And then he told us how it had taken him half an hour to pull up the

fish and how it had broken the line.

He said he had weighed the fish carefully when he reached home,

and the scale had read thirty -four pounds.

When he was gone, the landlord came in.

We told him the various stories we had heard about his trout,

and he was greatly amused.

We all laughed out loud.

Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and old Billy Monders.

They all tell you they had caught it.

Ha, ha, ha.

Well, that is good, said the honest old man, laughing.

And then he told us the real story of the fish.

It seemed that he had caught it himself years ago when he was a young boy.

He had caught it not by skill, but by pure luck one sunny afternoon when he had

skipped school.

He had caught it by tying a bit of string on the end of a tree.

He said, bringing home that trout had saved him from his father,

getting mad at him for not going to school.

The old man was called and left the room.

George and I turned and looked at the fish again.

It was truly an amazing trout.

George was so excited that he climbed up on the back of a chair to look at it more

closely.

And then the chair slipped, and George held on to the trout case to save himself

from falling.

Down it came with a crash, with George, and the chair on top of it.

You haven't injured the fish, have you?

I cried in panic.

I hope not, said George, getting up carefully and looking around.

But he had.

That trout was on the floor, broken into a thousand pieces.

I say a thousand, but they may have been only nine hundred.

I did not count them.

We thought it was strange and puzzling that a stuffed trout had broken up into

little pieces like that.

It would have been strange and puzzling if it had really been a stuffed

trout, but it was not.

It was made of plaster.

We left St. Lee early next morning and rode up to Colum and slept under the

canvas in a sheltered corner of the river there.

Then we came up to Wallingford.

Wallingford, six miles above St. Lee, is a very ancient town and has been an

active center in English history.

It was a simple town with mud houses in the time of the Britons until the Romans

came and chased them away.

Then they replaced the clay walls with massive walls that still exist to this

day.

From Wallingford up to Dorchester, the area surrounding the river grows more

hilly and more picturesque.

Dorchester is a delightfully peaceful old place, lying in stillness and

silence.

Dorchester was also a city in ancient British times.

It was then called Chair Dorian, the city on the water.

Then the Romans built a great wall there.

The city is very old, and it was very strong and great once.

Now it sits away from the rest of the world and dreams.

Round Clifton Hampton, which is also a wonderfully pretty village full of

old -fashioned peaceful flowers, the river scene is rich and beautiful.

There is an old inn that stands on the right of the bridge quite far from the

village.

It has a storybook appearance outside, and inside is even more like it belongs to

a distant past.

We were up early the next morning because we wanted to be in Oxford by the

afternoon.

It is surprising how early one can get up when camping out.

One does not wish for just another five minutes so much.

We had finished breakfast and had left Clifton by half past eight.

From Clifton to column the river banks are flat and uninteresting.

But after that you get to the coldest and deepest part of the river,

and the scenery gets better.

We passed through Iffley at about half past twelve and then tidied up the

boat and prepared to land.

Between Iffley and Oxford is the most difficult part of the river I know.

You must be born there to understand it.

I have passed it many times, but I have never been able to understand it.

There are many currents that push you in all directions.

First the current drives you onto the right bank and then onto the left,

and then it takes you out into the middle.

It turns you round three times and carries you upstream again.

Of course, as a result of this, we got in the way of many other boats,

and they, in hours.

And, as a result of this, a lot of bad language was heard.

I don't know why, but everybody is always so irritable on the river.

Little mistakes that you would not even notice on land drive you mad

when they occur on the water.

When Harris and George make a fool of themselves on land,

I smile in an irritated way.

But when they act like fools on the river, I use the most horrible language to them.

When another boat gets in my way, I feel like taking an oar and killing all the people in it.

I suppose the air of the river has a depressing effect on one's temper,

and this is what causes people to be rude to one another

and to use language which they regret using in calmer moments.

We spent two very pleasant days at Oxford.

There are plenty of dogs in the town of Oxford.

Montmorrancy had eleven fights on the first day and fourteen on the second.

Among people who are naturally too weak or too lazy to go upstream,

it is a common practice to get a boat at Oxford and row down.

The energetic people, however, prefer the upstream journey.

There is more satisfaction in going against the current.

That is what I feel when Harris and George are rowing and I am steering.

The weather changed on the third day, and we set off from Oxford on our journey back home

in the middle of a steady rain.

The river, with the sunlight shining from its dancing waves,

turning the gray -green tree trunks into gold,

smiling through the dark cool wood paths,

throwing kisses to the lilies,

brightening every tiny village shining happily on every sail,

is a golden fairy stream.

But the river is also cold and sleepy,

with raindrops falling on its brown, slow -moving waters,

while the dark and silent woods are covered in mists of vapor

stand like evil ghosts,

is a water that is sad and gloomy.

Sunlight is the lifeblood of nature.

When the sunlight has died away from her,

Mother Nature looks at us with dull, soulless eyes.

It makes us sad to be with her then.

She does not seem to care for us.

We rode on all that day through the rain.

At first, we pretended that we enjoyed it.

We said it was a change, and we liked to see the river in a different way.

We put up the cover before lunch,

and kept it up all afternoon.

We left a little space in the front of the boat,

so one of us could row from there.

We went nine miles in this way.

Then we stopped for the night.

I cannot say we had an enjoyable evening.

The rain continued to pour down.

Everything in the boat was damp.

Supper was not great.

When you have too much of it,

cold meat pie doesn't taste so good.

We played cards after supper.

We played for about an hour and a half.

By the end, George had won four pence.

George is always lucky at card games.

Harris and I lost two pence each.

George told us about a man he had known

who had come up the river two years ago.

He had slept on a damp boat on a night like this,

and he had got rheumatic fever.

Nothing was able to save him,

and he had died in pain ten days afterwards.

He was a young man and was engaged to be married.

George said it was one of the saddest things he had ever known.

That reminded Harris of a friend of his who had been a soldier.

He had slept under canvas one night at alder shot on a night like this,

and he had woken up in the morning with his bones so stiff

that he was never able to walk again.

Harris said he would introduce us to the man when we got back to town.

It would make our hearts bleed to see him.

This naturally led to some pleasant chat about sciatica,

fevers, chills, lung diseases, and bronchitis.

Harris said it would be very difficult if one of us got seriously ill

during the night because we were far away from a doctor.

We seemed to need something cheerful and entertaining,

so in a weak moment I suggested that George should get out his banjo

and try to play us a comic song.

I will say that George did not need any persuading.

At once he took out his instrument and started playing two lovely black eyes.

I had always thought two lovely black eyes was an ordinary song until that evening.

The sadness that came from it surprised me.

Harris and I struggled hard not to fall upon each other's arms and cry.

There was nothing else to do, so we went to bed.

We turned in our beds, that is, on the bottom of the boat, for three or four hours.

We finally fell asleep, and at five in the morning we got up and had breakfast.

The second day was exactly like the first.

The rain continued to pour down, and we sat underneath the canvas,

wrapped up in our raincoats, and drifted slowly down the river.

At one point we all agreed that we would go through with this task to the end.

Whatever happened we would enjoy ourselves.

We had come for a Fortnite's fun on the river, and we meant to get it.

It's only two more days, said Harris.

We are young and strong.

We may get over it all right.

At about four o 'clock we began to discuss our plans for the evening.

We were a little past goring then, and we decided to row until Pangborn,

and stay there for the night.

Another fun evening, said George.

We sat and thought about it.

We would be in Pangborn by five.

We would finish dinner at half past six.

After that we could walk about in the village under the rain until bedtime,

or we could sit in a dark inn and do nothing.

There was silence for a while.

If we hadn't decided to die here in this old coffin, said George,

looking around the boat with hatred, we could think about catching the five o 'clock train

from Pangborn and getting to London in time to visit the Alhambra Theatre

and have supper afterwards.

Nobody spoke.

We looked at one another, and each of us saw his own guilty thoughts

reflected in the faces of the others.

In silence we took out our bags and looked at them.

We looked up the river and down the river.

Not a person was in sight.

Twenty minutes later, three figures followed by a dog

could be seen walking guiltily towards the railway station.

They were dressed in the following way.

Black leather shoes, dirty.

Boating jacket and trousers, very dirty.

Brown hat, much worn.

Raincoat, very wet.

Umbrella.

We had deceived the boatman at Pangborn.

We did not have the courage to tell him we were running away from the rain.

We had left the boat and everything in it in his charge.

We told him it should be ready for us at nine the next morning.

If something unexpectedly happened, we would write to him.

We reached London at seven and drove directly to a restaurant I know.

We ate a light meal there and left Montmorrancy.

We told them to prepare a supper at half past ten

and went on our way to the Alhambra Theatre.

We attracted a lot of attention there.

We went to the ticket box to purchase our tickets,

but the man thought we were the world -famous magicians from the Himalaya Mountains.

We convinced the man with some difficulty and he took our money and let us pass.

Inside, we were a great success.

People had a look of admiration as they watched us walk in with our sun -burnt faces and strange clothes.

It was a proud moment for all of us.

We left early and went back to the restaurant where supper was waiting for us.

I must say, I enjoyed that supper.

For about ten days we had been living on nothing but cold meat, cake, and bread and jam.

It had been a simple, nutritious diet, but there was nothing exciting about it.

The smell of the food and the sauces and the sight of the clean napkins made us very happy.

We ate and drank in silence for a while until the time came when we'd lent back in our chairs,

stretched out our legs beneath the table, let our napkins fall to the floor,

and felt good and thoughtful and forgiving.

Then Harris, who was sitting next to the window, drew aside the curtain and looked out upon the street.

It shone darkly in the wet, the gas lamps trembling in the wind,

the rain splashed into the puddles.

A few wet people hurried away beneath their umbrellas.

Well, said Harris, reaching his hand out for his glass.

We have had a pleasant trip, and many thanks for it to Father Thames.

But I think we were right to give it up when we did.

Let's drink to three men well out of a boat.

And want more and see, standing on his back legs in front of the window,

looking out into the night, gave a short bark of agreement.