Трое в лодке, не считая собаки / Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). Джером Клапка Джером

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red shawl, it’s under the cushion.”

      You find the shawl, and by this time another one has come back and thinks she will have hers too, and they take Mary’s on chance,[76] and Mary does not want it, so they bring it back and have a pocket-comb instead. It is about twenty minutes before they get off again, and, at the next corner, they see a cow, and you have to leave the boat to drive the cow away.

      Finally George towed us steadily on to Penton Hook.[77] There we discussed the important question of camping. We had decided to sleep on board that night. We decided to go to Runnymead,[78] three and a half miles further, a quiet wooded part of the river, and where there is good shelter.

      We all wished, however, afterward that we had stopped at Penton Hook. Three or four miles up stream is really nothing early in the morning, but it is a hard job at the end of a long day. You do not chat and laugh. Every half-mile you cover seems like two. When you have gone – what seems to you – at least ten miles, and still the lock is not in sight, you begin to seriously fear that somebody had stolen it.

      I remember one day I was out with a young lady – cousin on my mother’s side – and we were pulling down to Goring.[79] It was rather late, and we were anxious to come home – at least she was anxious to return home. It was half-past six when we reached Benson’s lock,[80] and dusk was drawing on, and she began to get excited then. I drew out a map I had with me to see exactly how far it was. I saw it was just a mile and a half to the next lock – Wallingford[81] – and five on from there to Cleeve.[82]

      “Oh, it’s all right!” I said. “We’ll be through the next lock before seven, and then there is only one more”, and I settled down and pulled steadily away.

      We passed the bridge, and soon after that I asked if she saw the lock. She said no, she did not see any lock; and I said, “Oh!” and pulled on. Another five minutes went by, and then I asked her to look again.

      “No,” she said; “I can’t see any signs of a lock.”

      “You – you are sure you know a lock, when you do see one?” I asked hesitatingly, not wishing to offend her.

      The question did offend her, however, and she suggested that I had better look for myself. Not a sign of a lock was to be seen.

      “You don’t think we have lost our way, do you?” asked my companion, and she began to cry.

      I tried to reassure her. I said that I was not rowing fast, but that we should soon reach the lock now; and I pulled on for another mile.

      Then I began to get nervous myself. I looked again at the map. There was Wallingford lock, clearly marked, a mile and a half below Benson’s. It was a good, reliable map. Where were we? What had happened to us? I began to think it must be all a dream, and that I was really asleep in bed.

      I asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and she replied that she was just about to ask me the same question; and then we both wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who was the real one that was dreaming, and who was the one that was only a dream.

      I still went on pulling, however, and still no lock came in sight, and the river grew more and more gloomy and mysterious under the gathering shadows of night, and things became weird and uncanny. I thought of hobgoblins and banshees, and will-o’-the-wisps,[83] and those wicked girls who sit up all night on rocks, and lure people into whirl-pools and things. In the middle of these reflections I heard the sounds of a song, played, badly, on a concertina, and knew that we were saved.

      I do not admire the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh! how beautiful the music seemed to us both then – far, far more beautiful than the voice of Orpheus[84] or the lute of Apollo.[85] The music was human and reassuring.

      The sweet sounds drew nearer, and soon the boat from which they came lay alongside us. I never saw more attractive, lovable people in all my life. I hailed them, and asked if they could tell me the way to Wallingford lock; and I explained that I had been looking for it for the last two hours.

      “Wallingford lock!” they answered. “Sir, that’s been done away with for over a year.[86] There is no Wallingford lock now, sir. You’re close to Cleeve now!”

      I had never thought of that. We thanked them over and over again, and we said it was a lovely night, and we wished them a pleasant trip, and, I think, I invited them all to come and spend a week with me, and my cousin said her mother would be so pleased to see them. And we got home in time for supper, after all.

      Chapter X

      Harris and I began to think that Bell Weir lock[87] had dissapeared the same manner. George had towed us up to Staines,[88] 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 came to the place, and we all got in.

      We did not feel that we yearned for the picturesque so much now as we had earlier in the day. We did not want scenery. We wanted to have our supper and go to bed. However, we dropped into a very pleasant nook under a great elm-tree, to the spreading roots of which we fastened the boat.

      George said 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.[89]

      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. 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, we saw that they were in the wrong sockets, and they had to come out again.

      But they would not come out, they tried to 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.

      We got them fixed at last, and then we had 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. George did his part all right,[90] but it was new work to Harris.

      How he managed it I do not know, he could not explain himself; but by some mysterious process he succeeded, after ten minutes of superhuman effort, in getting himself completely rolled up in it. He was so firmly wrapped round, 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 himself entangled and rolled up.[91]

      I

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