Tom Brown at Rugby

by Thomas Hughes

MISFORTUNE THICKENS.

Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and so, partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances, partly from the faults of others, they found themselves outlaws,[16] ticket-of-leave men,[17] or what you will in that line; in short, dangerous parties, and lived the sort of hand-to-mouth, wild, reckless life, which such parties have to put up with. Nevertheless, they never quite lost favor with young Brooke, who was now the cock of the House,[18] and just getting into the sixth; and Diggs stuck to them like a man, and gave them store of good advice, by which they never in the least profited.

And even after the House mended, and law and order had been restored, which soon happened after young Brooke and Diggs got into the sixth, they couldn't easily or at once return into the paths of steadiness, and many of the old wild out-of-bounds habits stuck to them as firmly as ever. While they had been quite little boys, the scrapes they got into in the School hadn't much mattered to any one; but now they were in the upper school, all wrong-doers from which were sent up straight to the Doctor at once; so they began to come under his notice; and as they were a sort of leaders in a small way amongst their own contemporaries, his eye, which was everywhere, was upon them.

It was a toss-up[19] whether they turned out well or ill, and so they were just the boys who caused the most anxiety to such a master. You have been told of the first occasion on which they were sent up to the Doctor, and the remembrance of it was so pleasant, that they had much less fear of him than most boys of their standing had. "It's all his looks," Tom used to say to East, "that frightens fellows; don't you remember, he never said anything to us my first half-year, for being an hour late for locking up?"

The next time Tom came before him, however, the interview was of a very different kind. It happened just about the time at which we have now arrived, and was the first of a series of scrapes into which our hero now managed to tumble.

THE AVON.

The river Avon at Rugby is a slow and not a very clear stream, in which chub, dace, roach, and other coarse fish are (or were) plentiful enough, together with a fair sprinkling of small jack,[20] but no fish worth sixpence either for sport or food. It is, however, a capital river for bathing, as it has many nice small pools and several good reaches[21] for swimming, all within about a mile of one another, and at an easy twenty minutes' walk from the School. This mile of water is rented, or used to be rented, for bathing purposes, by the Trustees of the School, for the boys. The foot-path to Brownsover[22] crosses the river by "the Planks," a curious old single-plank bridge, running for fifty or sixty yards into the flat meadows on each side of the river, for in the winter there are frequent floods. Above the Planks were the bathing-places for the smaller boys,—Sleath's, the first bathing-place where all new boys had to begin, until they had proved to the bathing-men (three steady individuals who were paid to attend daily through the summer to prevent accidents) that they could swim pretty decently, when they were allowed to go on to Anstey's, about one hundred and fifty yards below. Here there was a hole about six feet deep and twelve feet across, over which the puffing urchins struggled to the opposite side, and thought no small beer of themselves for having been out of their depths. Below the Planks came larger and deeper holes, the first of which was Wratislaw's, and the last Swift's, a famous hole ten or twelve feet deep in parts, and thirty yards across, from which there was a fine swimming reach right down to the mill. Swift's was reserved for the sixth and fifth forms, and had a spring-board[23] and two sets of steps; the others had one set of steps each, and were used indifferently by all the lower boys, though each House addicted itself more to one hole than to another. The School-house at this time affected[24] Wratislaw's hole, and Tom and East, who had learnt to swim like fishes, were to be found there as regular as the clock through the summer always twice, and often three times a day.

DISPUTED RIGHTS OF FISHING.

Now the boys either had, or fancied they had, a right also to fish at their pleasure over the whole of this part of the river, and would not understand that the right (if any) only extended to the Rugby side. As ill-luck would have it, the gentleman who owned the opposite bank, after allowing it for some time without interference, had ordered his keepers[25] not to let the boys fish on his side; the consequence of which had been, that there had been first wranglings and then fights between the keepers and boys; and so keen had the quarrel become, that the landlord and his keepers, after a ducking had been inflicted on one of the latter, and a fierce fight ensued thereon, had been up to the Great School at calling-over to identify the delinquents, and it was all the Doctor himself and five or six masters could do to keep the peace. Not even his authority could prevent the hissing, and so strong was the feeling, that the four præpostors of the week walked up the school with their canes, shouting s-s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e at the top of their voices. However, the chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds, but the victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about their ears. The landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he rode past, and when he charged his horse at the mob of boys, and tried to thrash them with his whip, was driven back by cricket-bats and wickets, and pursued with pebbles and fives'-balls; while the wretched keepers' lives were a burden to them, from having to watch the water so closely.

The School-house boys of Tom's standing, one and all as a protest against this tyranny and cutting short of their lawful amusements, took to fishing in all ways, and especially by means of night-lines. The little tackle-maker[26] at the bottom of the town would soon have made his fortune had the rage lasted, and several of the barbers began to lay in fishing-tackle. The boys had this great advantage over their enemies, that they spent a large portion of the day in nature's garb by the river side, and so, when tired of swimming, would get out on the other side and fish, or set night-lines, till the keepers hove in sight, and then plunge in and swim back and mix with the other bathers, and the keepers were too wise to follow across the stream.