The Boy Tar

by Mayne Reid

For myself, I have had a variety of hair-breadth escapes from drowning. The very element which I loved so dearly, seemed the most desirous of making a victim of me; and I should have deemed it ungrateful, had I not known that the wild billows were unreasoning, irresponsible creatures; and I had too recklessly laid “my hand upon their mane.”

It was but a few weeks after my ducking in the pond, and I had already taken several swimming lessons, when I came very near making my last essay at this aquatic exercise.

It was not in the pond that the incident occurred, for that, being a piece of ornamental water, and private property, as I have told you, was not permitted to be used as a bathing place.

But the people of a sea-shore town need no lake in which to disport themselves. The great salt sea gives them a free bath, and our village had its bathing beach in common with others of its kind. Of course, then, my swimming lessons were taken in salt-water.

The beach which was habitually used by the villagers, had not the best name as a bathing place. It was pretty enough, with yellow sand, white shells, and pebbles; but there was what is termed an “under-tow”—in one particular place stronger than elsewhere; and at times it was a dangerous matter to get within the influence of this “under-tow,” unless the person so exposing himself was a good and strong swimmer.

There was a legend among the villagers, that some one had been drowned by this current; but that was an occurrence of long ago, and had almost ceased to be talked about. There were also one or two more modern instances of bathers being carried out to sea, but finally saved by boats sent after them.

I remember at that time having been struck with a fact relating to these mishaps; and this was, that the older inhabitants of the village, and they who were of most consequence in the place, never liked to talk about them; either shrugging their shoulders and remaining silent, or giving the legends a flat contradiction. Some of them even went so far as to deny the existence of an “under-tow,” while others contented themselves by asserting that it was perfectly harmless. I always noticed, however, that parents would not permit their boys to bathe near the place where the dangerous current was represented to exist.

I never knew the reason why the villagers were so unwilling to acknowledge the “under-tow,” and the truth of the stories connected therewith. That is, I knew it not until long, long afterwards—until I came home again after my forty years of adventure. On my return, I found the same silence and shrugging of the shoulders, although by a generation of villagers altogether different from those I had left behind. And this, too, notwithstanding that several accidents had occurred in my absence, to prove that the “under-tow” did actually exist, and that it was actually dangerous.

But I was then older and better able to reason about men’s motives, and I soon fathomed the mystery. It was this: our village is, as you know, what is called a “watering-place,” and derived some support from visitors who came to it to spend a few weeks of their summer. It is a watering-place upon a small scale, it is true, but were there to be much talk about the “under-tow,” or too much credence given to legends of people who have been drowned by it, it would become a watering-place on a still smaller scale, or might cease to be one altogether. Therefore the less you say of the “under-tow,” the better for your own popularity among the wise men of the village.

Now, my young friends, I have been making a long story about what you will deem a very ordinary adventure, after all. It is simply to end by my telling you that I was drowned by the “under-tow”—actually drowned!