Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 2.pdf/21



But just as we launched a sour-faced man
 * Came tow'rds us, biting his lips, and bade

The noisy Frenchmen, who after him ran,
 * "Pull out at once." Well, they were afraid;

Still they tumbled in in their bragging way,
 * Shouting their gibberish loud enough,

But half way came a wave at play,
 * And the lubbers were not of a right good stuff.

So they turned, and left the men to drown;
 * Then we went mad at that, and raced

For the boat at the other end of the town;
 * And we ferried across, but the fools, disgraced,

Would not bring the key, and were sullen and glum.
 * So we tore down the rails, which did quite as well,

And launched the boat, and were cool and dumb,
 * Till we pulled away for that foaming hell.

How loud they cheered from the pier and sands
 * As we shot like a sea bird to the wreck;

Our hearts were good, but how weak our hands;
 * Waves do not yield to a coxswain's beck.

A cruel sea struck our staggering boat,
 * A moment, and half of us had gone,

And I and some others, on oars afloat,
 * Saw the careless wave roll roaring on.

But English are English, come what may;
 * And life to them is a paltry thing

Compared with duty; so quickly they
 * Pushed off while we were still struggling;

And rescuing all that were left, again
 * They pulled through the racing rolling tide,

And saved the last Frenchman, whose worn weak brain
 * Had turned when his friends had slowly died.

And the Sunday morning, when all was calm,
 * Our steam-boat left with the five dead men,

And half way across we sang a psalm
 * Beside the row of coffins, and then

The captain read us a chapter or two.
 * Till presently up the white cliffs came;

But not for them, the brave and true,
 * Who put the Calais men to shame.

day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded by the windows of my lodging, an equestrian phenomenon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner. The fellow-creature wore high boots, some other (and much larger) fellow-creature's breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a baggy form, a blue shirt whereof the skirt or tail was puffily tucked into the waistband of the said breeches, no coat, a red shoulder-belt, and a demi-semi-military scarlet hat with a feathered ornament in front, which to the uninstructed human vision had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock. I laid down the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man in question, with astonishment. Whether he had been sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of Sartor Resartus; whether "the husk or shell of him," as the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey, on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy-shop, on Guy Fawkes, on Wax-Work, on Gold Digging, on Bedlam, or on all, were doubts that greatly exercised my mind. Meanwhile my fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the slippery stones of my Covent Garden street, and elicited shrieks from several sympathetic females, by convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his horse's head. In the very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three right hands as commanding unseen troops to Up guards and at 'em. Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the direction of the Surrey Hills.

Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satisfaction of beholding it advancing along the street. It was a Tee-Total procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to consume twenty minutes in passing. There were a great number of children in it, some of them so very young in their mothers' arms as to be in the act of practically exemplifying their abstinence from fermented liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the procession defiled. The display was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any good-humoured holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people should be. It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those latter trophies had come up in profusion under much watering. The day being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was very reprehensible. Each of these, being borne aloft on two poles and stayed with some half dozen lines was carried, as polite books in the last century used to be written, by "various hands," and the anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of those officers—something between the anxiety attendant on the balancing art, and that inseparable from the