e, we went drifting speedily up towards Chiswick; but now he
caught up the sculls and brought her head round again, and said--"A short
swim, neighbour; but perhaps you find the water cold this morning, after
your journey. Shall I put you ashore at once, or would you like to go
down to Putney before breakfast?"

He spoke in a way so unlike what I should have expected from a
Hammersmith waterman, that I stared at him, as I answered, "Please to
hold her a little; I want to look about me a bit."

"All right," he said; "it's no less pretty in its way here than it is off
Barn Elms; it's jolly everywhere this time in the morning. I'm glad you
got up early; it's barely five o'clock yet."

If I was astonished with my sight of the river banks, I was no less
astonished at my waterman, now that I had time to look at him and see him
with my head and eyes clear.

He was a handsome young fellow, with a peculiarly pleasant and friendly
look about his eyes,--an expression which was quite new to me then,
though I soon became familiar with it. For the rest, he was dark-haired
and berry-brown of skin, well-knit and strong, and obviously used to
exercising his muscles, but with nothing rough or coarse about him, and
clean as might be. His dress was not like any modern work-a-day clothes
I had seen, but would have served very well as a costume for a picture of
fourteenth century life: it was of dark blue cloth, simple enough, but of
fine web, and without a stain on it. He had a brown leather belt round
his waist, and I noticed that its clasp was of damascened steel
beautifully wrought. In short, he seemed to be like some specially manly
and refined young gentleman, playing waterman for a spree, and I
concluded that this was the case.

I felt that I must make some conversation; so I pointed to the Surrey
bank, where I noticed some light plank stages running down the foreshore,
with windlasses at the landward end of them, and said, "What are they
doing with those things here? If we were on the Tay, I should have said
that they were for drawing the salmon nets; but here--"

"Well," said he, smiling, "of course that is what they _are_ for. Where
there are salmon, there are likely to be salmon-nets, Tay or Thames; but
of course they are not always in use; we don't want salmon _every_ day of
the season."

I was going to say, "But is this the Thames?" but held my peace in my
wonder, and turned my bewildered eyes eastward to look at t