more like the galley that bore Cleopatra to Actium. Nor, floating so light
on the top of the water, and broad in the beam withal, curved upward and
ornamented at stern and stem, did it look at all like a creature formed to
battle with the fierce elements. A pleasure-boat for floating between river
banks it seemed, drawn by swans mayhap, and regarded in its course by
fair eyes from green terrace-walks, or oriel windows of ancient houses on
verdant lawns. Ten men sat on the thwarts, and one in the stern by the yet
useless rudder, while men and boys drew the showy thing by a rope downward
to the lock-gates. The men in the boat, wore blue jerseys, but you could
see little of the colour for strange unshapely things that they wore above
them, like an armour cut out of a row of organ pipes. They were their
cork-jackets; for every man had to be made into a life-boat himself. I
descended the bank, and stood on the edge of the canal as it drew near.
Then I saw that every oar was loosely but firmly fastened to the rowlock,
so that it could be dropped and caught again in a moment; and that the gay
sides of the unwieldy-looking creature were festooned with ropes from the
gunwale, for the men to lay hold of when she capsized, for the earlier
custom of fastening the men to their seats had been quite given up, because
their weight under the water might prevent the boat from righting itself
again, and the men could not come to the surface. Now they had a better
chance in their freedom, though why they should not be loosely attached to
the boat, I do not quite see.

They towed the shining thing through the upper gate of the lock, and slowly
she sank from my sight, and for some moments was no more to be seen, for I
had remained standing where first she passed me. All at once there she was
beyond the covert of the lock-head, abroad and free, fleeting from the
strokes of ten swift oars over the still waters of the bay towards the
waves that roared further out where the ground-swell was broken by the rise
of the sandy coast. There was no vessel in danger now, as the talk of the