An Inland Voyage | Page 2

but at this moment I feel towards him
an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my reader:
--if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine.
R.L.S.

ANTWERP TO BOOM

We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and a lot of dock
porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for the slip. A crowd
of children followed cheering. The Cigarette went off in a splash and a
bubble of small breaking water. Next moment the Arethusa was after
her. A steamer was coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted

hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the
quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of
the Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 'long-shore
vanities were left behind.
The sun shone brightly; the tide was making--four jolly miles an hour;
the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For my part, I had
never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and my first experiment out
in the middle of this big river was not made without some trepidation.
What would happen when the wind first caught my little canvas? I
suppose it was almost as trying a venture into the regions of the
unknown as to publish a first book, or to marry. But my doubts were
not of long duration; and in five minutes you will not be surprised to
learn that I had tied my sheet.
I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course, in
company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in
a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with
these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the
same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of
our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened;
but I had never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against
an obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a
commonplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have
been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely more
consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better
than we thought. I believe this is every one's experience: but an
apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents
mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish
sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been
some one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger; to
tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how the
good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or
never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on the
sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among us will go to the
head of the march to sound the heady drums.
It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past laden with
hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle and grey
venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over the embankment.

Here and there was a pleasant village among trees, with a noisy
shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. The wind served us well
up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; and we were running pretty
free when we began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long
way on the right bank of the river. The left bank was still green and
pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here and there
a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with
her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver
spectacles. But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier
with every minute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden
bridge over the river, indicated the central quarters of the town.
Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: that the
majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that they can speak
English, which is not justified by fact. This gave a kind of haziness to
our intercourse. As for the Hotel de la Navigation, I think it is the worst
feature of the place. It boasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at one end,
looking on the street; and another sanded parlour, darker and colder,
with an empty bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way of
sole adornment, where we made shift