酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Three Men in a Boat-Part24_Jerome K.Jerome(1859-1927)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
a friend of mine!"



Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistaken him for a

relation, or he would probably have been drowned outright.



Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practice too - though, as a

boy, I did not think so. I had an idea it came natural to a body, like



rounders and touch. I knew another boy who held this view likewise, and

so, one windy day, we thought we would try the sport. We were stopping



down at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up the Yare. We

hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge, and started off. "It's



rather a rough day," said the man to us, as we put off: "better take in a

reef and luff sharp when you get round the bend."



We said we would make a point of it, and left him with a cheery "Good-

morning," wondering to ourselves how you "luffed," and where we were to



get a "reef" from, and what we were to do with it when we had got it.

We rowed until we were out of sight of the town, and then, with a wide



stretch of water in front of us, and the wind blowing a perfect hurricane

across it, we felt that the time had come to commence operations.



Hector - I think that was his name - went on pulling while I unrolled the

sail. It seemed a complicated job, but I accomplished it at length, and



then came the question, which was the top end?

By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventuallydecided that the



bottom was the top, and set to work to fix it upside-down. But it was a

long time before we could get it up, either that way or any other way.



The impression on the mind of the sail seemed to be that we were playing

at funerals, and that I was the corpse and itself was the winding-sheet.



When it found that this was not the idea, it hit me over the head with

the boom, and refused to do anything.



"Wet it," said Hector; "drop it over and get it wet."

He said people in ships always wetted the sails before they put them up.



So I wetted it; but that only made matters worse than they were before.

A dry sail clinging to your legs and wrapping itself round your head is



not pleasant, but, when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.

We did get the thing up at last, the two of us together. We fixed it,



not exactly upside down - more sideways like - and we tied it up to the

mast with the painter, which we cut off for the purpose.



That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not

upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the



matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory

explanation of the phenomenon.



Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy

of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the



conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had

come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to



disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.

By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed to keep



inside the boat, but it was exhausting work. Hector said that pirates

and other seafaring people generally lashed the rudder to something or



other, and hauled in the main top-jib, during severe squalls, and thought

we ought to try to do something of the kind; but I was for letting her



have her head to the wind.

As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended by adopting it,



and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her her head.

The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I have never



sailed at since, and don't want to again. Then, at a bend, she heeled

over till half her sail was under water. Then she righted herself by a



miracle and flew for a long low bank of soft mud.

That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way into the middle of it



and then stuck. Finding that we were once more able to move according to

our ideas, instead of being pitched and thrown about like peas in a



bladder, we crept forward, and cut down the sail.

We had had enough sailing. We did not want to overdo the thing and get a



surfeit of it. We had had a sail - a good all-round exciting,

interesting sail - and now we thought we would have a row, just for a



change like.

We took the sculls and tried to push the boat off the mud, and, in doing



so, we broke one of the sculls. After that we proceeded with great

caution, but they were a wretched old pair, and the second one cracked



almost easier than the first, and left us helpless.

The mud stretched out for about a hundred yards in front of us, and



behind us was the water. The only thing to be done was to sit and wait

until someone came by.



It was not the sort of day to attract people out on the river, and it was




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号