Part 8

The next day, when he went into school, he was found to have prepared his lessons particularly well, and the master looked at him with an approving eye, as a boy likely to do credit to himself, and some little, perhaps, to the school. From the very first Reginald set himself against the use of cribs. He was rather laughed at for this, at first, by his associates, who were aware of what they considered his peculiar crotchet.

"I have just a question to ask you fellows," he observed one day. "Do you think it right or gentlemanly to tell a lie? Answer me seriously, not in joke."

It was agreed that a lie was ungentlemanly and wrong.

"Well, is it not equivalent to the telling a lie to pretend to have obtained knowledge in one way, when you have obtained it in another? Is it not the same to take up a copy of verses or an exercise which you did not write, and to pretend that you wrote them? That is one reason why I will not use a crib. I should feel ashamed of myself, and disgraced every time I did so. Another reason is, that we came to school to gain knowledge, to prepare ourselves for college, and for our future course in life, as completely as we can; and the use of cribs prevents our doing this, for though they may enable us to get through a lesson, depend on it a lesson learnt with them is very quickly again forgotten. There is nothing like having to turn over the leaves of a dictionary that we may find a word, to enable us to remember it."

"Yes, but few fellows can turn over the leaves as quickly as you can," observed Anson.

"I learned the knack at a private tutor's long ago," answered Reginald. "I thought it a bore at first, but he showed us how to do it properly, and I very soon found the advantage of what he insisted on."

Power supported Reginald in this and many other respects, when he held out boldly against what his straightforward, honest mind at once saw to be bad practices. He made enemies by so doing, but he also made friends; the enemies he made were the least worthy, and the friends the most worthy of his school-fellows--many of them becoming and continuing firm and fast ones.

Reginald very soon made acquaintance with old Harry Cannon, the waterman at Cuckoo Weir. Fully thirty fellows were either standing on Lower Steps or in punts, without a rag on them, ready to plunge into the clear stream; or were swimming about by themselves, spluttering and coughing; or were being dangled at the end of old Harry's blue pole. Reginald had thought that it was necessary to go, at all events, in the first place, to old Harry. Many of the fellows, not knowing that he could swim, tried to frighten him; but, without much ceremony, he doffed his clothes, and in he went with a "rat's header" at once, and swam boldly up the stream, stemming it lustily; then he turned a sommersault, trod water, and went through a variety of manoeuvres to which the youngsters present were but little accustomed.

"You'll do, sir; you'll do," shouted old Harry, quite delighted with the spirited way in which he took to the water; "a Newfoundland dog couldn't have done it better."

Of course, on the first "passing day," Reginald--who was to be met by Power, Anson, and some others of his new friends, in a boat--started off for Middle Steps.

The masters stood ready. Reginald jumped into the punt, and, with several others, was carried out into mid-stream. Several were ordered to plunge overboard before him. Most of them went in with "footers," and now two or three were ordered to come out and take further lessons from old Harry. Reginald waited patiently till his turn came, and then overboard he went with a fine "rat's header," and downwards he dived. He did not come up. The masters were alarmed, and shouted to old Harry to look for him.

"What can have become of the boy?" exclaimed one of them, in real alarm.

Suddenly, not far off, up came Reginald, with a big stone in his hand.

"All right!" he exclaimed. "I wanted to bring a trophy from the bottom;" and, depositing it on Middle Steps, away he swam in good style to Lower Steps. Just touching them, away he went--now swimming with one arm, now with the other, now with both hands like a dog, now turning on his back and striking out with his feet.

"You'll do, and do famously!" exclaimed the master, who was not famed for bestowing unnecessary compliments on any one.

Reginald came out with no little feeling of allowable pride, and, dressing quickly, stepped on board the boat, when, taking the yoke-lines in a knowing manner, he steered away for Bargemen's Bridge, where the stream once more joins the river.

Reginald at once threw himself into boating most zealously. He was always on the water, practising away, and soon became as proficient with oars as with sculls--his great ambition being to belong to an eight-oar. He and Power took a lock-up between them, for which they paid five pounds; and though they liked it very much, they agreed that it was not half so much fun as their boating in old days at Osberton, with Toby Tubb as coxswain. Reginald did not neglect cricket, however; but as he was still numbered among the Lower boys he could only belong to the Sixpenny Club.

The playing-fields at Eton are divided between different clubs. The boys subscribe to one or the other according to their position in the school. Above the Sixpenny, to which the entrance is only one shilling, is the Lower Club, to which those in the Fifth Form belong who are considered not to play well enough to belong to the Upper Club. To the Upper Club the clever and all the first-rate players alone belong. The grand cricketing time is "after six," when, in the playing-fields, the balls are flying about as thickly as in a general action, or, at all events, as at "Lord's" on practising days; while, especially at the great matches in the Upper Club, the non-players lie on the turf, indulging largely in Bigaroon cherries and other fruits in season, and making their remarks on the game.

Such is the every-day Eton life in which Reginald found himself placed. There was abundance of occupation to pass the time, and yet no very salient events worthy of description. After he had been there about a fortnight, he found himself apportioned, by the captain of his house, to a master who had already another fag. That fag, Cross, had been all his school-life at Eton, and was well accustomed to the work, so thought nothing of it; but when Reginald first found himself ordered to perform some menial office, he could not help his spirit rising in rebellion; but he soon conquered the feeling, the absurdity of which he acknowledged to himself, and he at once set about his task with a cheerful countenance and willing hands. The out-of-door fagging went more against the grain, as he did not like to be sent here or there by any stranger about some trifle, when he wanted to be doing something else; but he soon got reconciled to that also, with the reflection that all Eton fellows had to go through it.

Cross and he got on very well together. They were not great friends, but they never quarrelled. Their master, Coventry, was good-natured, though strict in having the duties they owed him performed, and his orders obeyed.

Reginald was talking over Coventry's character with Power, and observed--"I would fifty times rather serve a strict master like him than one of your easy-going, idle fellows, who all of a sudden takes it into his head that he will have everything in apple-pie order, and thrashes you because you do not know what he wants."

"Certainly," answered Power. "When I first came I had a master who never by any chance was in the same mind two days together. He would have different things for breakfast and tea, and everything in his room arranged differently. He kept my mind on a continual stretch to guess what he would want, till he made me very nearly as mad as himself. At last I informed him that I would do anything that he told me, but that I could not undertake to guess his wishes. He could not see the reasonableness of my arguments, and so I at length gave up any attempt to please him--he of course never being satisfied; and thus we went on till the end of the half."

What with observation, conversation, and his own personal experience, Reginald daily gained a larger amount of knowledge of the world in which he was destined to move--not of the bad which was taking place, but of the way to conduct himself in it.

STORY FOUR, CHAPTER ONE.

STORY FOUR--THE CREW OF THE ROSE.

A crew of Johnians were rowing down the Cam on a fine summer day, in their own boat Two of them were freshmen--sixth form boys in manners and pursuits; the coxswain had entered on his third year, and was reading for honours. These were English youths. The fourth--Morgan ap Tydvill--was from Wales, a pleasant, companionable fellow, proud of his country, proud of his own family in particular, and proud of the boat, of which he was part owner; generous and friendly, but very choleric, though easily calmed down. The fifth was Gerald O'Mackerry, of Irish genealogy, as his name intimates, and his patronymic was a subject of much harmless pride with him. These two latter personages were in their second year.

For some time the four rowers bent earnestly to their oars, the coxswain doing the principal part of the talking work; but as the stream carried the boat along, and there was no necessity for constant pulling, they at times restrained their arms to let their tongues run free. The chatting commenced thus:--

"We haven't given a name to the boat yet."

"Well, I vote for the `Hose.'"

"I think the `shamrock' sounds well," said O'Mackerry.

"The Leek," was Ap Tydvill's suggestion.

"`_Leek_!'--an unlucky name!" observed Green, the coxswain, who, though a gentlemen and a scholar, was sadly addicted to punning; but they were all of Saint John's College, and therefore punsters by prescription. This bad pun let out a good deal of punning; when it ceased to flow, the original subject was renewed.

"Will the Trinity boat beat us next month? They have a choice crew, all in capital condition, and heavy men. O'Mack is the only twelve stone man here," (all gownsmen, you know, are _men_, however boyish in years and appearance), "and Tyd is such a little fellow!"

"I'm five feet seven," replied he, rather snappishly; "and I can tell you that the mean height of a man's stature is but five feet four. (Murmurs of dissent.) O'Mack is about ten inches above the standard; but I'll back a man of my own height (drawing himself up majestically) against him for walking, jumping, running, fighting, wrestling, swimming, throwing a bar, or rowing a long distance--if he have my breadth of chest and shoulders, and such an arm as this," displaying a limb as hard and muscular as that of a blacksmith. By his own estimate he was of the perfect size and form.

"In wrestling nimble, and in running swift; Well made to strike, to leap, to throw, to lift."

His vanity, however, though quizzed unmercifully, was not humiliated by any detected failure in his bodily proportions, which he submitted to measurement. The circumference of his arm and wrist was considerable-- the whole limb and his chest brawny, hirsute, and muscular.

"I'm not afraid of Trinity," shouted he loudly, if not musically. "_Sumamus longum haustum et fortem haustum, et haustum Omne simul_, as Lord Dufferin said at the Norwegian Symposium, and we shall bump them."

At the spirited Latin watchword, our Cantabs commenced a chorus, "_Omne simul, omne simul_," etc, etc, which Tyd himself had set to an old Welsh tune of the Bardic days. The effect was thrilling--the coxswain, both sonorously and with a correct ear, singing, "_Omne simul, omne simul_," and beating time with his feet against the stretcher, while the rowers, arms and lungs and all, pulled and chorused sympathetically.

This sport lasted about half an hour, and then the question was again mooted, "What name shall we give to the boat?"

Green, the steersman, put the question: "Those who vote for the Rose will say ay--three ays; those who vote for the Shamrock--one; those who vote for the Leek--one."

"The ays have it."

Three triumphant cheers for the majority.

The freshman, quite cockahoop at the victory gained over Ap Tydvill and O'Mackerry, ventured to ask the Welshman "how it happened that a leek became the national emblem of Wales?" He readily answered, "When my country was able to lick (query: leek) your country,--I don't include yours, O'Mackerry,--one of our jolly old princes having gained a great victory over one of your Saxon leaders and his army, took up a _chive_, which he found growing somewhere near the Wye, and said, `We'll wear this henceforward as a memorial of this victory.'"

"Pooh, pooh," said the coxswain; "the true version is this. Once upon a time, Wales was so infested with monkeys that the natives were obliged to ask the English to lend them a hand in destroying them. The English generously came to their assistance; but not perceiving any distinction between the Welsh and the monkeys, they killed a great number of the former, by mistake of course; so, in order to distinguish them, clearly, they requested that the Welshmen would stick a leek in their bonnets." A running fire (though on water) commenced against poor Monsieur Du Leek--as the bantering youngsters, with profound bows and affected gravity, chose to name Ap Tydvill--of pedigree immeasurable.

However, he recovered his serenity, after an explosion of wrath somewhat dangerous for a moment; and, on the free trade principle, began to quiz some one else.

"Mack," said he, "do you remember the ducking you got _there_, among the _arundines Cami_?" pointing to a deep sedgy part of the river.

"I do; and I had, indeed, a narrow escape from drowning, or rather from being suffocated in the deep sludgy mud."

"How was it?" one of the others asked.

"I was poling a punt along the bank, looking for waterfowl to have a shot, you know, and I pulled myself into the river!"

"You mean, Paddy," said Mr Tydvill, "that you pulled yourself out of the river."

"No; I mean what I say; there is no blunder for you to grin at. I stuck the pole so firmly into the deep mud, that I could not pull it out; but it pulled me in."

"Why didn't you let go at once?"

"I hadn't time to think of that; instinctively I grasped the pole, lost my balance, and tumbled into the river."

The unfortunate youth was extracted from the deep slime among osiers by a labourer near hand, and he dried his clothes in a cottage--

"Quae villula tectum, Praebuit--"

without any bad results.

"But, do you remember, Master Tydvill," said O'Mackerry, "the day when I was so near catching you and throwing you into the deep hole--clothes and all? Ay, and you deserved a ducking?"

"But really, Mack, would you have pitched me in, when you knew that I was a bad swimmer, especially when dressed?"

"Assuredly I would have done so, for I was unusually hot in my temper, though very cold in my body at that moment; however, I suppose that I should have acted the part of the Newfoundland dog, and dragged the puppy by his neck out of the water."

This complimentary part he addressed to the crew at large, and then described the incident.

He had been sitting on the top bar of a ladder, of which the lower end rested on the bottom of a very deep part of the river under a high and steep bank, for the purpose of aiding a swimmer in his ascent from the water. The day was cold, and O'Mackerry remained in a crouching posture for a few moments on the ladder, meditating the plunge, but not taking it. His playful friend stole behind and jerked him, heels over head, into the water, and immediately ran away. O'Mackerry, after recovering from the shock and getting out of the river, pursued the offender nearly half a mile, and happily without catching him. Tydvill rather unhandsomely afterwards caricatured his friend as a barometrical green frog in a broad pellucid bottle partly filled with water, squatting on a rung of a ladder, ingeniously serving as a graduated scale, to show the condition of the atmosphere; the frog rising or descending as its sensations led it to immerse its body in water, or rise more or less above it. O'Mackerry was a capital swimmer, and was sometimes seen to capsize himself from an Indian canoe, which he had purchased somewhere on the river Shannon, into its tidal waters with his clothes on, for the purpose of habituating himself to swim under such difficulty. He had the satisfaction of saving the lives of two persons in danger of drowning, by his skill, courage, and presence of mind.

"But how did you learn to swim and dive so well?"

"When I was a little boy, I was fond of books of Voyages, and I liked, above all things, to read the description of the bathing pranks of the Otaheite savages, who were such active divers, that when a nail was thrown overboard, they would plunge after it, and catch it before it reached the bottom. I thought that I could do what a savage did so easily, and I soon learned to do what so many animals do without any instruction at all. If you want a model, take a frog, and imitate its motions in the water. Courage is everything."

"But, Mack, every one hasn't such long and strong legs and arms as you have--just like a frog's."

"Thank you for the comparison--not for the first time, Master Tyd--but I have not a great belly like a frog's, which is useful in swimming--at least in floating. A large pot-bellied man may lie on the water as long as he likes, if he keeps his head well back so as to have it supported by the water--and with his heels closed and neck up."

"But surely in that position he would be like a log on the water, and make no way," remarked some one of the listeners.

"True, but he can rest himself in that position until he chooses to strike out again. Just fancy yourself a fish: you are specifically lighter than water, and you can lie as near the surface as you please; use your fins and you can move about to the right or left--as a boat is moved by its oars; use your tail and you steer in any direction--as the rudder turns the direction of the boat. Then fancy your fins and tail cut off--there you lie like a raft--without poles or oars--but you do not sink. If you have one fin, or part of one, you move like a boat with one whole or broken oar. Now our bodily apparatus is not designed like that of a fish for swimming, but it is capable of enabling us to swim sufficiently well for our necessities. Just read Old Franklin on the art of swimming, and you will understand the theory of the matter at once. The great difficulty in practice is the fear which people have of being drowned, and this can only be overcome by accustoming ourselves to the water."

"Now, Mack," said Tydvill, "you know I cannot swim; what ought I to have done if you had pitched me into that awful hole?"

"You should have kept yourself from struggling and plunging, letting the back of your head lie quietly under the water, with your mouth free for breathing--but not for screaming and water-drinking--till I had taken the trouble of catching hold of you."

"But surely," replied Tydvill, "the weight of my clothes would have sunk me?"

"I think not," rejoined his friend; "the water would have supported them too, though you'd have found them very heavy when you came out of it. Will you try the experiment?"

"The theory is sufficient for me," concluded the sprightly Welshman. However, another of the crew put this question:--

"Since the body can be supported on the surface of the water, as O'Mackerry has said, and with little exertion, or without any, as in swimming on the back, how is it that a drowned body sinks, and often rises some days afterwards?"

"Because," said our philosopher,--who had been crammed on the subject,--"the lungs of a drowning person become filled with water, and therefore the body, becoming specifically heavier, sinks. The body remains at the bottom only until the water has been quite freed from it by _compression_; it then is swelled and expanded by gases generated within, and becoming lighter than the water, rises to the top."

They had for some time been leaning on their oars, enjoying this chat, and were about to retrace their course, when one of the English lads asked O'Mackerry if he had ever been in real danger in a boat. The other reflected a little, and then thought of an incident which had occurred to him some years ago, before he had learned to swim. "Yes," said he, "but for God's good providence I would have been," ("You mean _should_, I suppose," said Coxswain Green, in an under tone) "assuredly drowned. I had been contriving how to put out striker lines in a deep loch near my father's house, and, not having a boat, I substituted a stable door, taken from its hinges, as a raft for my purpose. I had read of rafts on the Rhine with whole families on them--with a cabin and cow-house and pig-sty; and why should not my miniature raft support my weight? I floated the door--balanced myself nicely upon it--put out for the middle of the loch, gently paddling it with a pole, and fearful of the slightest change of my position, which would have destroyed the horizontal equilibrium of my feeble raft. When I had gone far enough-- into water thirty or forty feet deep--I sent off the strikers, but unfortunately flung away my paddle along with them. My insensibly nervous movements caused the door to incline into the water at one side an inch or two. I moved a hair's breadth; it then declined to the other side. It would sink. I had no doubt of this. Then I gently stooped to try if I could unfasten a shoe; but this was impracticable. I tried a balancing movement again, and the door righted, but not entirely. My presence of mind, however, did not fail me. I took off my hat, and paddled myself with this from side to side alternately, until I reached the strand--through thick masses of aquatic plants--the water-lily in particular, whose long and interlacing stems would have embraced me to death, if I had fallen among them. I have never known any one to swim or bathe in that dangerously deep loch. I do not see how I could have escaped drowning at that time if I had slipped from the raft."

This led the adventurous youth to narrate another difficulty from which he had been mercifully extricated by God's providence. He had been snipe-shooting in an Irish hog, and thoughtlessly trod upon a green, firm, and sound-looking, but very treacherous quagmire, us he was watching a snipe which had just sprung up. He was suddenly immersed in the semi-fluid peat to his shoulders, and only saved from quickly subsiding into the depths of the morass by a solid bed of clay, at the depth of five feet and a half. He sank to his under lip, barely escaping suffocation, and having his breath spared for shouting. He was pulled up by various contrivances, a reeking column of black mire. As it seemed clear that Mr O'Mackerry must have been engulfed in the bog if he had been half an inch under six feet two in stature, it was illogically argued that it would be a general advantage to manhood if all were exceedingly tall--suppose of the height of the suite of the Duke of Brunswick (composed of men some inches above seven feet), which came to London a hundred years ago.

"Of course," said Tydvill, "Churchill is right in the Rosciad when he says:

"`Your hero should be always tall, you know.'"