lagging chum to "hurry up and see real monkey on a stick."

I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck would have it, we
had not taken the proper precaution to bring out a spare pole with us. I
could only sit and look at him. His expression as the pole slowly sank
with him I shall never forget; there was so much thought in it.

I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw him scramble out,
sad and wet. I could not help laughing, he looked such a ridiculous
figure. I continued to chuckle to myself about it for some time, and
then it was suddenly forced in upon me that really I had got very little
to laugh at when I came to think of it. Here was I, alone in a punt,
without a pole, drifting helplessly down mid-stream--possibly towards a
weir.

I began to feel very indignant with my friend for having stepped
overboard and gone off in that way. He might, at all events, have left
me the pole.

I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came in sight of a
fishing-punt moored in mid-stream, in which sat two old fishermen. They
saw me bearing down upon them, and they called out to me to keep out of
their way.

"I can't," I shouted back.

"But you don't try," they answered.

I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and they caught me and
lent me a pole. The weir was just fifty yards below. I am glad they
happened to be there.

The first time I went punting was in company with three other fellows;
they were going to show me how to do it. We could not all start
together, so I said I would go down first and get out the punt, and then
I could potter about and practice a bit until they came.

I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were all engaged; so I
had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank, watching the river,
and waiting for my friends.

I had not been sitting there long before my attention became attracted to
a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise, wore a jacket and cap
exactly like mine. He was evidently a novice at punting, and his
performance was most interesting. You never knew what was going to
happen when he put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself.
Sometimes he shot up stream and sometimes he shot down stream, and at
other times he simply spun round and came up the other side of the pole.
And with every result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed.

The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in him aft