That is my opinion of towlines in general. Of course, there may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may be towlines that are a credit to their profession—conscientious, respectable towlines—towlines that do not imagine they are crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they are left to themselves. I say there may be such towlines; I sincerely hope there are. But I have not met with them.
This towline I had taken in myself just before we had got to the lock. I would not let Harris touch it, because he is careless. I had looped it round slowly and cautiously, and tied it up in the middle, and folded it in two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat. Harris had lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George’s hand. George had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had begun to unravel it as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a newborn infant; and, before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly-made doormat than anything else.
It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always goes on in connection with it. The man on the bank, who is trying to disentangle it, thinks all the fault lies with the man who rolled it up; and when a man up the river thinks a thing, he says it.
“What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net of it? You’ve made a nice mess you have; why couldn’t you wind it up properly, you silly dummy?” he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildly with it, and lays it out flat on the towpath, and runs round and round it, trying to find the end.
On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole cause of the muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.
“It was all right when you took it!” he exclaims indignantly. “Why don’t you think what you are doing? You go about things in such a slapdash style. You’d get a scaffolding pole entangled you would!”
And they feel so angry with one another that they would like to hang each other with the thing. Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives a yell and goes mad, and dances on the rope, and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold of the first piece that comes to his hand and hauling at it. Of course, this only gets it into a tighter tangle than ever. Then the second man climbs out of the boat and comes to help him, and they get in each other’s way, and hinder one another. They both get hold of the same bit of line, and pull at it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught. In the end, they do get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat has drifted off, and is making straight for the weir.
This really happened once to my own knowledge. It was up by Boveney, one rather windy morning. We were pulling down stream, and, as we came round the bend, we noticed a couple of men on the bank. They were looking at each other with as bewildered and helplessly miserable expression as I have ever witnessed on any human countenance before or since, and they held a long towline between them. It was clear that something had happened, so we eased up and asked them what was the matter.
“Why, our boat’s gone off!” they replied in an indignant tone. “We just got out to disentangle the towline, and when we looked round, it was gone!”
And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a mean and ungrateful act on the part of the boat.
We found the truant for them half a mile further down, held by some rushes, and we brought it back to them. I bet they did not give that boat another chance for a week.
I shall never forget the picture of those two men walking up and down the bank with a towline, looking for their boat.
One sees a good many funny incidents up the river in connection with towing. One of the most common is the sight of a couple of towers, walking briskly along, deep in an animated discussion, while the man in the boat, a hundred yards behind them, is vainly shrieking to them to stop, and making frantic signs of distress with a scull. Something has gone wrong; the rudder has come off, or the boat-hook has slipped overboard, or his hat has dropped into the water and is floating rapidly down stream.
He calls to them to stop, quite gently and politely at first.
“Hi! stop a minute, will you?” he shouts cheerily. “I’ve dropped my hat overboard.”
Then: “Hi! Tom—Dick! can’t you hear?” not quite so affably this time.
Then: “Hi! Confound you, you dunder-headed idiots! Hi! stop! Oh you—!”
After that he springs up, and dances about, and roars himself red in the face, and curses everything he knows. And the small boys on the bank stop and jeer at him, and pitch stones at him as he is pulled along past them, at the rate of four miles an hour, and can’t get out.
Much of this sort of trouble would be saved if those who are towing would keep remembering that they are towing, and give a pretty frequent look round to see how their man is getting on. It is best to let one person tow. When two are doing it, they get chattering, and forget, and the boat itself, offering, as it does, but little resistance, is of no real service in reminding them of the fact.
As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can be
