The Saloon
At the end of the first day of this ignoble process of transportation I had enough things on board to be able to sleep there in comparative comfort. And at the end of the few days during which the Mate stayed away with the children I was able to tell myself that the barge at last looked like a home. The cabins were all furnished and habitable; the pictures were hung; even the china and books were arranged provisionally.
When for the first time I lit the fifty-candle-power lamp which hung from the ceiling of the saloon and looked down the long radiant room I said that I never wanted to live in a better place.
I cannot forget the pride of those first few evenings on board. Here was a dream come true. Wherever I cared to go my home would go with me and carry everything I owned; and the barge was not only my home, but my yacht and my motorcar. Every evening I held a kind of levée in the saloon. Tom had more sailor friends, and Harry more landsmen relations, than I had suspected. As for Sam Prawle, as critic-in-chief and privy councillor, he was licensed to bring on board as many people as he pleased. I learned that the race of bargees had all along known the best use to which a barge could be put, and I myself figured as a tardy practitioner in ideas which had been immemorially in their possession. Yet it gratified me to notice that they gaped a good deal at the transformed Will Arding, particularly at night, when candles as well as the lamp showered a thousand points of light on silver and glass and china.
Sam Prawle at one of my levées explained to the assembled guests that the simplest way of going to London was by barge. It was evident to him that I had done well to make myself independent of trains, which in his view were the confusion of all confusions. One of the most baffling experiences of his life, apparently, had been a journey by train from Fleetwick to Whitstable.
‘That may be right enough for same as them what fare to understand these things,’ he said, ‘but I don’t hould with them. Well, naow look at here, sir. When yaou get to Wickford ye’ve got to shift aout o’ one train into t’other, ain’t ye, sir? And there’s two docks where them trains baound up to Lunnon berth. Five years ago we was in one dock, and year afore last it was t’other. Well, ye daon’t knaow where ye are, sir, do ye? I niver knaow one of they blessed trains from another; that’s the truth, that is; they all fare to me the spit o’ one another. Then there’s everyone a bustlin’ abaout, and them railway chaps a shaoutin’ aout afore the train come, and when she do come most everyone’s in such a hurry to git aboard that there ain’t no time to ask, and ye don’t knaow where ye are, sir.
‘Then, happen yaou’ll have to shift again halfway up to Lunnon, and happen not; that fare to be all accordin’. And same as when ye git to Lunnon, yaou’ve got to git acrost it, ain’t ye, and when ye asks haow to do it, some on ’em says, “Yaou go under-ground,” and some on ’em sez, “Yaou take a green bus with Wictoria writ on it.” I ain’t over and above quick at readin’, and I daon’t never fare to git as far as where she’s a goin’ to afore she gits under way. Last time I got someone from here to put me aboard and speak the conductor for me. But then agin, when ye git to t’other station and git your ticket, ye ain’t found the blessed ould train, for that’s a masterous great station full o’ trains. No, sir, ye don’t knaow where ye are, and that’s the truth, that is. Then mebbe yaou’ve got to shift agin on the Whitstable line, same as I did time I went arter them oysters.
‘But same as goin’ in a little ould barge or a smack with the wind the way it is naow. If ye muster an hour afore low water ye can take the last o’ the ebb daown raound the Whitaker spit. Then ye just hauls yer wind and takes the flood up Swin till ye come to the West Burrows Gas Buoy. Accordin’ to haow the tide is ye may have to make a short hitch to wind’ard to make sure o’ clearin’ that ould wreck on the upper part o’ the sand. Arter that ye can keep she a good full till ye find the tail o’ the Mouse Sand with yer lead; then, soon as ye git more water agin, bear away abaout south an’ by west and keep her head straight on Whitstable. Ye knaow where ye are, sir, the whole time, don’t ye? A course, if ye’re a bit early on the tide ye may have to keep away a bit to clear the east end o’ the Red Sand, but yaou must have come wonnerful quick if there ain’t water over the Oaze, and Spaniard, and Gilman, and Columbine. That’s easy same as night-time, too, for when ye’re clear o’ the Mouse Sand ye can go from the Gas Buoy on the lower end of the Oaze across the Shiverin’ Sand to the Girdler Lightship that is, if yaou can’t go overland. Yes, yes; that’s much better; ye knaow where ye are the whole time, don’t ye?
‘I ain’t on’y took a barge above Lunnon once’t, and I remember that well, as I larned suthen I den’t know afore and that ’ad to do with trains, too. We ’ad just berthed at Twickenham with coals, and as I ’ad to goo to Lunnon to see the guvnor I goos off to the railway station and buys a ticket, and says to the fust porter I sees, “Whin’s the next daown train, mate?”
‘“In abaout twenty minutes,” ’e says.