When the man in the hired upriver boat sees anyone he knows, he gets out on to the bank, and hides behind a tree.

I was one of a party who hired an upriver boat one summer, for a few days’ trip. We had none of us ever seen the hired upriver boat before; and we did not know what it was when we did see it.

We had written for a boat⁠—a double sculling skiff; and when we went down with our bags to the yard, and gave our names, the man said:

“Oh, yes; you’re the party that wrote for a double sculling skiff. It’s all right. Jim, fetch round the Pride of the Thames .”

The boy went, and reappeared five minutes afterwards, struggling with an antediluvian chunk of wood, that looked as though it had been recently dug out of somewhere, and dug out carelessly, so as to have been unnecessarily damaged in the process.