But the Lake of Constance sadly wants islands, and here in the Zeller See are several, one of them being of great size. The Emperor of the French had passed two days at his chateau on this lake, just before we arrived. No doubt he would have waited a week had he known the Rob Roy was coming.[XVII.]
However, as we were too late to breakfast with his Majesty, I pulled in at the village of Steckborn, where an inn is built on the actual edge of the water, a state of things most convenient for the aquatic tourist, and which you find often along this part of the Rhine. In a case of this sort you can tap at the door with the paddle, and order a repast before you debark, so that it is boiling and fizzing, and the table is all ready, while you put things to rights on board, and come leisurely ashore, and then tie the boat to the window balcony, or, at any rate, in some place where it can be seen all the time you breakfast or dine, and rest, and read, and draw.
Experience proved that very few boys, even of the most mischievous species, will meddle with a boat which is floating, but that very few men, even of the most amiable order, will refrain from pulling it about when the little craft is left on shore.
To have your boat not only moored afloat but in your sight too,—that is perfection, and it is worth additional trouble to arrange this, because then and for hours of the midday stoppage, you will be wholly at ease, or at any rate, you will have one care the less, the weary resting traveller will not then be anxious about his absent boat, as if it were a valuable horse in a strange stable.
The landlord was much interested in the story of my voyage as depicted in the sketch-book, so he brought a friend to see me who could speak French, and who had himself constructed a boat of two tin tubes,[XVIII.] on which a stage or frame is supported, with a seat and rowlocks, the oddest looking thing in nautical existence. I persuaded him to put this institution into the water, and we started for a cruise; the double-tube metal boat, with its spider-like gear aloft, and the oak canoe, so low and rakish, with its varnished cedar deck, and jaunty flag, now racing side by side, each of them a rare sight, but the two together quite unprecedented.
The river here is like parts of the Clyde and the Kyles of Bute, with French villages let in, and an Italian sky stretched overhead. We rowed across to a village where a number of Jews live, for I wished to visit their Synagogue; but, lo! this was the Grand Duchy of Baden land, and a heavily-armed sentry found us invading the dominion, so he deployed and formed square to force us to land somewhere else. The man was civil, but his orders were unreasonable, so we merely embarked again and went over to Switzerland, and ran our little fleet into a bramble bush, to hide it while we mounted to an auberge on the hill for a sixpenny bottle of wine.
The pretty Swiss lass in charge said she once knew an Englishman—but "it was a pity they were all so proud." He had sent her a letter in English, which I asked her to let me read for her. It began, "My dear little girl, I love you;" and this did not sound so very proud for a beginning. My boating friend promised to make her a tin cafetiere, and so it may be divined that he was the tinman of the village, and a most agreeable tinman too.
She came to see us on board, and her father arrived just in time to witness a triangular parting, which must have puzzled him a good deal, Amelia waving farewell to a "proud" Englishman and a nautical whitesmith, who both took leave also of each other, the last sailing away with huge square yards and coloured canvas, and the Rob Roy drifting with the stream in the opposite direction.
Every day for weeks past had been as a picnic to me, but I prolonged this one into night, the air was so balmy and the red sun setting was so soon replaced by the white moon rising, and besides, the navigation here had no dangers, and there were villages every few miles.