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Rowe called the lake Linnet Flash. Wherever the canal seemed to spread out, and then go on again narrow and like a river, the barge-master called these lakes "flashes" of the canal. There is no other flash on that canal so large or so beautiful as Linnet Lake, and in the middle of the lake lies the island.
Rowe confronted us, in his firmest manner, with the question, "And where are you going to sleep, young gentlemen?" "Where are you going to sleep, Mr. Rowe?" said I, after a thoughtful pause. "I sleeps below, but the captain's cabin is guv up to no one unless it be the Queen," replied the barge-master, humorously but decidedly. "We should like to sleep on deck," said I. But Mr.
So cleverly was the unshipping of the oars managed, and so good was the steering, that the boat shot into the passage under full speed, and so came nearly through it before losing head-way. And we who were nearest to it got our arms in readiness for we were convinced that in another minute the barge-master would lay us aboard.
But before our going into the city there was a stirring conflict of authority concerning us between the temporal and the spiritual powers. We were no more than fairly landed, indeed, when an officer addressed the barge-master, who continued in charge of our party, and gave him a formal order to bring the strangers directly before the Council of the Twenty Lords.
When we were fairly off we ventured to peep out a little, and stretch our cramped limbs. There was no one on board but the barge-master, and he was at the other end of the vessel, smoking and minding his rudder. The driver was walking on the towing-path by the old grey horse.
Rowe spoke of the world made me think he must have seen a good deal of it, and when we had looked our last upon the island, and had crept with lowered mast under an old brick bridge where young ferns hung down from the archway, and when we were once more travelling between flat banks and coppices that gave us no shelter, I said to the barge-master "Have you ever been at sea, Mr. Rowe?"
While the barge-master and the messenger from the Council still were engaged in hot talk as to which of the two conflicting orders should be recognised, there was the sound of tramping feet and of arms clanking; and then a body of fully one hundred soldiers came quickly from behind a house that was near by the water-side and swept down on a double-quick to where we were standing at the end of the pier.
"If you leaves a comfortable 'ome, sir," moralized the barge-master, "to go a-looking for adventures in this fashion, you must put up with rough quarters, and wot you can get." "We'll go anywhere you think right, Mr. Rowe," said I diplomatically. "I knows a waterman," said Mr. Rowe, "that was in the Royal Navy like myself. He lives near here, and they're decent folk.
The dew was still heavy on the grass when Fred and I crossed the drying-ground about five o'clock on Thursday morning, and scrambled through a hedge into our "coastguard" corner on the wharf. We did not want to be seen by the barge-master till we were too far from home to be put ashore. The freshness of early morning in summer has some quality which seems to go straight to the heart.
As to becoming cabin-boy to a trading vessel in hopes of rising to be a captain, the barge-master contrived to impress me with the idea that I might as well take the situation of boot and knife cleaner in the Royal Kitchen, in hopes of its proving the first step towards ascending the Throne.
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