Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome [84]
I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck would have it, we had not taken the proper precaution to bring out a spare pole with us. I could only sit and look at him. His expression as the pole slowly sank with him I shall never forget; there was so much thought in it.
I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw him scramble out, sad and wet. I could not help laughing, he looked such a ridiculous figure. I continued to chuckle to myself about it for some time, and then it was suddenly forced upon me that really I had got very little to laugh at when I came to think of it. Here was I, alone in a punt, without a pole, drifting helplessly down midstream – possibly towards a weir.
I began to feel very indignant with my friend for having stepped overboard and gone off in that way. He might, at all events, have left me the pole.
I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came in sight of a fishing-punt moored in midstream, in which sat two old fishermen. They saw me bearing down upon them, and they called out to me to keep out of their way.
‘I can’t,’ I shouted back.
‘But you don’t try,’ they answered.
I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and they caught me and lent me a pole. The weir was just fifty yards below. I am glad they happened to be there.
The first time I went punting was in company with three other fellows; they were going to show me how to do it. We could not all start together, so I said I would go down first and get out the punt, and then I could potter about and practise a bit until they came.
I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were all engaged; so I had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank, watching the river, and waiting for my friends.
I had not been sitting there long before my attention became attracted to a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise, wore a jacket and cap exactly like mine. He was evidently a novice at punting, and his performance was most interesting. You never knew what was going to happen when he put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself. Sometimes he shot up-stream and sometimes he shot down-stream, and at other times he simply spun round and came up the other side of the pole. And with every result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed.
The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in him after a while, and to make bets with one another as to what would be the outcome of his next push.
In the course of time my friends arrived on the opposite bank, and they stopped and watched him too. His back was towards them, and they only saw his jacket and cap. From this they immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was I, their beloved companion, who was making an exhibition of himself, and their delight knew no bounds. They commenced to chaff him unmercifully.
I did not grasp their mistake at first, and I thought, ‘How rude of them to go on like that, with a perfect stranger, too!’ But before I could call out and reprove them, the explanation of the matter occurred to me, and I withdrew behind a tree.
Oh, how they enjoyed themselves ridiculing that young man! For five good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him. They peppered him with stale jokes, they even made a few new ones and threw them at him. They hurled at him all the private family jokes belonging to our set, which must have been perfectly unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their brutal jibes any longer, he turned round on them, and they saw his face!
I was glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left in them to look very foolish. They explained to him that they had thought he was someone they knew. They said they hoped he would not deem them capable of so insulting anyone except a personal friend of their own.
Of course their having mistaken him