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Updated: June 9, 2025
Away they went, the multitudinous leaves children of the poplar, the willow, the fig-tree, and vine; some broad and clumsy like rafts or barges, others slender and graceful like little skiffs; all stained with some brilliant colour of autumn. I had reckoned upon getting a mid-day meal at a village called Crégols on the opposite bank, but when I at length reached it I had another trial.
But we'll have to watch out for them." We sat in the cockpit and discussed the details of our plan till eleven o'clock had passed, when we heard the rattle of an oar in a boat from the direction of the Ghost. We hauled up our own skiff, tossed in a few sacks, and rowed over. There we found all the skiffs assembling, it being the intention to raid the beds in a body.
Then I would get on a barrel, on deck of my flag ship, and command the English general to surrender unconditionally, and if he refused I would set a slow match on every oil vessel, and have the crews get in skiffs and pull for the opposite shore, and when the oil got on fire, and rolled up all over Gibraltar, and burned every living thing, I would throw water from a fire department boat on the rock, and she would split open and roll all over-the prairie, and then I would bury the cremated dead out on the desert, and seek other worlds to conquer, like Alexander the Great.
The robber-band put the skiffs into the water and started one after the other on their way; they went down until they reached the stream leading to the great dyke, by which they could punt down to the park of Lankadomb, just where the shooting-box was. It was about midnight when they reached it.
But the most interesting feature was the boats, most of them going up, a few coming down. There were two schooners, larger than the Mary Ann, but crowded as full, which, just ahead, tacking back and forth, sometimes were near, sometimes far. There were also smaller boats, skiffs and scows, full to the gunwales, their passengers rowing and paddling hard, as if in a race.
In one heavily laden boat there was one man steering with a paddle. Four men towed the craft against the current, and behind it was another drawn by six dogs. Out in the river were small skiffs and canoes in couples, engaged in holding nets across the direction of the current. The paddles wore struck regularly and slowly to prevent drifting down the stream.
I must explain, however, that occasionally when the divers returned from pearl-fishing, they used to rope all their little skiffs together and let them lie astern of the schooner. Well, one night the wind rose and rain fell heavily, with the result that next morning all the little boats were found more or less water-logged. Some of the Malays were told off to go and bale them out.
Skiffs, canoes, hastily improvised rafts, were moving in every direction, carrying the unsightly chattels of the poor out of their overflowed cottages to higher ground.
On the other hand the Gauls doubtless employed in the Channel in Caesar's time, as for long afterwards, a species of portable leathern skiffs, which seem to have been in the main common oared boats, but on the west coast of Gaul the Santones, the Pictones, and above all the Veneti sailed in large though clumsily built ships, which were not impelled by oars but were provided with leathern sails and iron anchor-chains; and they employed these not only for their traffic with Britain, but also in naval combat.
Along the sides of this garden on the gravel-walk loll go-to-sleep straw chairs, with little wicker tables within reach of your hand for B.& S., or tea and toast, or a pint in a mug, and down at the water's edge seafaring men like Fin and me find a boathouse with half a score of punts, skiffs, and rowboats, together with a steam-launch with fires banked ready for instant service.
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