If there were rules I don't know now what they were, and nobody paid
much attention to them. Of course we let the passenger boats pass
whenever they overtook us, unless we could beat them into a lock. We
delayed them then by laying our boat out into the middle of the canal
and quarreling until we reached the lock; under cover maybe of some
pretended mistake. Our laying the boat out to shut off a passing rival
was dangerous to the slow boat, for the reason that a collision meant
that the strongly-built stem-end of the boat coming up from behind could
crush the weaker stern of the obstructing craft. Such are some of the
things I had to learn.



3

The passing of us by a packet brought me my first grief. She came up
behind us with her horses at the full trot. Their boat was down the
canal a hundred yards or so at the end of the tow-line; and just before
the boat itself drew even with ours she was laid over by her steersman
to the opposite side of the ditch, her horses were checked so as to let
her line so slacken as to drop down under our boat, her horses were
whipped up by a sneering boy on a tall bay steed, her team went outside
ours on the tow-path, and the passage was made. They made, as was always
the case, a moving loop of their line, one end hauled by the packet, and
the other by the team. I was keeping my eye skinned to see how the thing
was done, when the tow-line of the packet came by, tripped me up and
threw me into the canal, from which I was fished out by Bill as our boat
came along. There was actual danger in this unless the steersman
happened to be really steering, and laid the boat off so as to miss me.