The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took
it up and shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a
Centaur carrying off a nymph. To keep some command on our direction
required hard and diligent plying of the paddle. The river was
in such a hurry for the sea! Every drop of water ran in a panic,
like as many people in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was
ever so numerous, or so single-minded? All the objects of sight
went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing
river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed
so tight, that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument;
and the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through all
the highways and byways of the veins and arteries, and in and
out of the heart, as if circulation were but a holiday journey,
and not the daily moil of three-score years and ten. The reeds
might nod their heads in warning, and with tremulous gestures
tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and
how death lurked in the eddy underneath the willows. But the
reeds had to stand where they were; and those who stand still
are always timid advisers. As for us, we could have shouted
aloud. If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing
of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted
himself with us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring
points against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of
the stream. I have rarely had better profit of my life.
For I think we may look upon our little private
war with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will
sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle
of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances
as so much gained upon the thieves. And above all, where instead
of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some
of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So every
bit of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is
just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall
have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when
he cries stand and deliver. A swift stream is a favourite artifice
of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum;
but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle
in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise.
Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the
sunshine and the exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer
contain ourselves and our content. The canoes were too small
for us; we must be out and stretch ourselves on shore. And so
in a green meadow we bestowed our limbs on the grass, and smoked
deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world excellent. It was
the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme
complacency.
On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky
summit of the hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared
at regular intervals. At each revelation he stood still for
a few seconds against the sky: for all the world (as the Cigarette
declared) like a toy Burns who should have just ploughed up
the Mountain Daisy. He was the only living thing within view,
unless we are to count the river.
A chateau on the Oise river.
On the other side of the valley a group of red
roofs and a belfry showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired
bell-ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells.
There was something very sweet and taking in the air he played;
and we thought we had never heard bells speak so intelligibly,
or sing so melodiously, as these. It must have been to some
such measure that the spinners and the young maids sang, "Come
away, Death," in the Shakespearian Illyria. There is so
often a threatening note, something blatant and metallic, in
the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than
pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they sounded abroad,
now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught
the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were always moderate
and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still,
rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of
a rookery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for
his blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently
to the time of his meditations. I could have blessed the priest
or the heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs
in France, who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the
afternoon, and not held meetings, and made collections, and
had their names repeatedly printed in the local paper, to rig
up a peal of brand-new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted substitutes,
who should bombard their sides to the provocation of a brand-new
bell-ringer, and fill the echoes of the valley with terror and
riot.
At last the bells ceased, and with their note
the sun withdrew. The piece was at an end; shadow and silence
possessed the valley of the Oise. We took to the paddle with
glad hearts, like people who have sat out a noble performance
and returned to work. The river was more dangerous here; it
ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and violent. All the
way down we had had our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was
a weir which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and full
of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from the water and
carry them round. But the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence
of the late high winds. Every two or three hundred yards a tree
had fallen across the river, and usually involved more than
another in its fall.
Often there was free water at the end, and we
could steer round the leafy promontory and hear the water sucking
and bubbling among the twigs. Often, again, when the tree reached
from bank to bank, there was room, by lying close, to shoot
through underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes it was necessary
to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats across;
and sometimes, when the stream was too impetuous for this, there
was nothing for it but to land and "carry over." This
made a fine series of accidents in the day's career, and kept
us aware of ourselves.
Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was
leading by a long way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit
in honour of the sun, the swift pace, and the church bells,
the river made one of its leonine pounces round a corner, and
I was aware of another fallen tree within a stone-cast. I had
my backboard down in a trice, and aimed for a place where the
trunk seemed high enough above the water, and the branches not
too thick to let me slip below. When a man has just vowed eternal
brotherhood with the universe, he is not in a temper to take
great determinations coolly, and this, which might have been
a very important determination for me, had not been taken under
a happy star. The tree caught me about the chest, and while
I was yet struggling to make less of myself and get through,
the river took the matter out of my hands, and bereaved me of
my boat. The Arethusa swung round broadside on, leaned over,
ejected so much of me as still remained on board, and thus disencumbered,
whipped under the tree, righted, and went merrily away down
stream.
I do not know how long it was before I scrambled
on to the tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer
than I cared about. My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre
character, but I still clung to my paddle. The stream ran away
with my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I
seemed, by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in
my trousers-pockets. You can never know, till you try it, what
a dead pull a river makes against a man. Death himself had me
by the heels, for this was his last ambuscado, and he must now
join personally in the fray. And still I held to my paddle.
At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and
lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humour and
injustice. A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon
the hill-top with his team. But there was the paddle in my hand.
On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed:
"He clung to his paddle."
The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for,
as I might have observed, if I had been a little less pleased
with the universe at the moment, there was a clear way round
the tree-top at the farther side. He had offered his services
to haul me out, but as I was then already on my elbows, I had
declined, and sent him down stream after the truant Arethusa.
The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe,
let alone two, upon his hands. So I crawled along the trunk
to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the river-side.
I was so cold that my heart was sore. I had now an idea of my
own why the reeds so bitterly shivered. I could have given any
of them a lesson. The Cigarette remarked facetiously that he
thought I was "taking exercise" as I drew near, until
he made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold.
I had a rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the
india-rubber bag. But I was not my own man again for the rest
of the voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry
clothes upon my body. The struggle had tired me; and perhaps,
whether I knew it or not, I was a little dashed in spirit. The
devouring element in the universe had leaped out against me,
in this green valley quickened by a running stream. The bells
were all very pretty in their way, but I had heard some of the
hollow notes of Pan's music. Would the wicked river drag me
down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?
Nature's good-humour was only skin-deep after all.
There was still a long way to go by the winding
course of the stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell
was ringing in Origny Sainte-Benoite, when we arrived.
