An Inland Voyage | Page 5

sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our knees. It rained
smartly. Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no
nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business;
and people well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in a good vein
for laughter. From this point of view, even egg a la papier offered by
way of food may pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this
manner of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not invite
repetition; and from that time forward, the Etna voyaged like a
gentleman in the locker of the Cigarette.
It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over and we
got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away. The rest
of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the
unfavouring air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then a
spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly
trees.
It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water- lane,
going on from village to village. Things had a settled look, as in places
long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges as
we went below, with a true conservative feeling. But even more
conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go
by without one glance. They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and
along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. They were
indifferent, like pieces of dead nature. They did not move any more
than if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered,
the water lapped, but they continued in one stay like so many churches
established by law. You might have trepanned every one of their
innocent heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line
below their skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in
india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon
rod; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art,
for ever and a day, by still and depopulated waters.
At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress who
spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple of
leagues from Brussels. At the same place, the rain began again. It fell in
straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was thrown up into
an infinity of little crystal fountains. There were no beds to be had in

the neighbourhood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and address
ourselves to steady paddling in the rain.
Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered
windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich
and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of
the canal. I seem to have seen something of the same effect in
engravings: opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the
passage of storm. And throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart,
which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at an almost
uniform distance in our wake.

THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE

The rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the air
was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of us. Nay,
now we found ourselves near the end of the Allee Verte, and on the
very threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by a serious difficulty.
The shores were closely lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the
lock. Nowhere was there any convenient landing-place; nowhere so
much as a stable-yard to leave the canoes in for the night. We
scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet where some sorry fellows
were drinking with the landlord. The landlord was pretty round with us;
he knew of no coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the sort; and
seeing we had come with no mind to drink, he did not conceal his
impatience to be rid of us. One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue.
Somewhere in the corner of the basin there was a slip, he informed us,
and something else besides, not very clearly defined by him, but
hopefully construed by his hearers.
Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and at the top
of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The Arethusa addressed
himself to these. One of them said there would be no difficulty about a
night's lodging for our boats; and the other, taking a cigarette from his
lips, inquired if they were made by Searle and Son. The name was quite
an introduction. Half-a- dozen other young