In the present instance, however, as for the camping out, his practical view of the matter was just in time. Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant. It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good two inches of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite so wet as other places you have seen, and you land, and two of you start to fix the tent.
It is wet and heavy, and it flops about, and falls down on you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomes extremely difficult. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he lifts it from his end, and spoils it all.
Here! what are you up to? you call out.
What are you up to? he objects; let it go, cant you?
Dont pull it; youve got it all wrong, you stupid fool! you shout.
No, I havent, he yells back; let go your side!
I tell you youve got it all wrong! you roar, wishing that you could get at him; and you pull your ropes that all his pegs are out.
Ah, the idiot! you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and your side goes away. You start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain his views to you. And you follow each other round and round, swearing at one another, until the tent falls down, and leaves you looking at each other across its ruins, when you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:
There you are! What did I tell you?
Meanwhile the
third man, who has been baling out the boat, and who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know why the tent isnt up yet.
At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the things. It is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so you light the methylated spirit stove, and crowd round that.
Rainwater is the chief component of diet at supper. The bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is extremely rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup. After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot smoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers, if taken in right quantity, and you go to bed.
There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom of the sea the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your chest. You wake up and realize that something terrible really has happened. Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then you think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, or else fire, and this opinion you express in the usual method. No help comes, however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and you are being suffocated.
Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint cries coming from underneath your bed. Being determined to sell your life expensively, you fight, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling, and at last something gives way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you see a half-dressed hooligan, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when you realize that its Jim.
Oh, its you, is it? he says, recognizing you at the same moment.
Yes, you answer, rubbing your eyes; whats happened?
The tents blown down, I think, he says. Wheres Bill?
Then you both raise up your voices and shout for Bill! and the ground beneath you heaves, and the faint voice that you heard before replies from out the ruin:
Get off my head, cant you?
And Bill struggles out in an aggressive mood he believes that the whole thing has been done on purpose.
In the morning you are all three speechless, having to catch severe colds at night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast time.
We therefore decided that we would sleep out at fine nights and in hotel, or inn, like respectable people, when it was wet, or when we wanted a change.
Montmorency greeted this compromise with much approval. He does not enjoy romantic loneliness. To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-so-mething-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears into the eyes of old ladies and gentlemen.