backwards and outwards. The crew impart their own life to their boat;
the animate and inanimate become as one, the boat is no longer wooden
but alive.

If there be a breeze a fleet of white sails comes round the
willow-hidden bend. But the Thames yachtsmen have no slight difficulties
to contend with. The capricious wind is nowhere so thoroughly capricious
as on the upper river. Along one mile there may be a spanking breeze,
the very next is calm, or with a fitful puff coming over a high hedge,
which flutters his pennant, but does not so much as shake the sail. Even
in the same mile the wind may take the water on one side, and scarcely
move a leaf on the other. But the current is always there, and the
vessel is certain to drift.

When at last a good opportunity is obtained, just as the boat heels
over, and the rushing bubbles at the prow resound, she must be put
about, and the napping foresail almost brushes the osiers. If she does
not come round--if the movement has been put off a moment too long--the
keel grates, and she is aground immediately. It is nothing but tacking,
tacking, tacking--a kind of stitching the stream.

Nor can one always choose the best day for the purpose; the exigencies
of business, perhaps, will not permit, and when free, the wind, which
has been scattering tiles and chimney-pots and snapping telegraph wires
in the City all the week, drops on the Saturday to nothing. He must
possess invincible patience, and at the same time be always ready to
advance his vessel even a foot, and his judgment must never fail him at
the critical time.

But the few brief hours when the circumstances are favourable compensate