side to themselves. Their chief enterprize was the
exploration of the sources of the stream in a canoe and a fixed
endeavour to reach Basingstead Major by water. Early in the morning they
would set out, well equipped with scarlet cushions and butterfly-nets
and poison-bottles and sandwiches and stone bottles of ginger beer and
various illustrated papers and Duke's Cameo cigarettes. Michael now paid
fivepence for ten instead of a penny for five cigarettes: he also had a
pipe of elegantly tenuous shape, which was knocked out so often that it
looked quite old, although it was scarcely coloured at all by tobacco
smoke. Nowadays he did not bother to chew highly scented sweets after
smoking, because Captain Ross smoked so much that all the blame of
suspicious odours could be laid on him.

Those were halcyon days on that swift Hampshire river. Michael and Alan
would have to paddle hard all the morning scarcely making any progress
against the stream. Every opportunity to moor the canoe was taken
advantage of; and the number of Marsh Fritillaries that were sacrificed
to justify a landing in rich water-meadows was enormous.

"Never mind," Michael used to say, "they'll do for swaps."

Through the dazzling weather the kingfishers with wings of blue fire
would travel up and down the stream. The harvest was at its height and
in unseen meadows sounded the throb of the reaper and binder, while
close at hand above the splash and gurgle of the rhythmic paddles could
be heard the munching of cattle. To left and right of the urgent boat
darted the silver companies of dace, and deep in brown embayed pools
swam the fat nebulous forms of chub. Sometimes the stream, narrowing
where a large tree-trunk had fallen, gushed by their prow and called for
every muscle to stand out, for every inch to be fought, for every blade
of grass to be clutched before the canoe won a way through. Sometimes
the stream widened to purling rapids and scarcely would even a canoe
float upon the diamonded rivulets and tumbling pebbles and silting
silver sand, so that Michael and Alan would have to disembark and drag
the boat to deeper water. Quickly the morning went by, long before the
source of the stream was found, long before even the village of
Basingstead Major was reached. Some fathomless millpool would hold
Michael and Alan with its hollow waterfall and overarching trees and
gigantic pike. Here grew, dipping down to the water, sprays of
dewberries, and here, re