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Updated: May 22, 2025
So I judged, from the circumstance of Peckham's unfurling a silken banner that fanned heaven and earth with the words, 'The Peckham Lifeboat. No boat being in attendance, though life, in the likeness of 'a gallant, gallant crew, in nautical uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Peckham is described by geographers as an inland settlement, with no larger or nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to understand no lifeboat exists.
That afternoon there came down to the parsonage a note from Mary to the Captain, asking her lover to meet her, and walk with her before dinner. He met her, and they took their accustomed stroll along the towing-path and into the fields. Mary had thought much of her aunt's words before the note was written, and had a fixed purpose of her own in view.
Such breakfast as he had, he took at the comfortless public-house where he had parted from Riderhood on the occasion of their night-walk. He took it, standing at the littered bar, and looked loweringly at a man who stood where Riderhood had stood that early morning. He outwalked the short day, and was on the towing-path by the river, somewhat footsore, when the night closed in.
Burfield must doubtless be in a terrible state of anxiety, I hurried back along the towing-path, rejoicing in the thought that I should now be able to relieve my fair visitor's mind of her anxiety.
Some are pulled by horses, and often men or women labour along the towing-path dragging these heavily laden vessels by a rope fastened to a short mast set up in the bows. This is hard work, but the barge-folk seem to think nothing of it. Whole families are born, live, and die on their barges.
And the people on the canal were anything but kind. The people on the canal were, of course, the bargees, who steered the slow barges up and down, or walked beside the old horses that trampled up the mud of the towing-path, and strained at the long tow-ropes.
All day long the road had lain through pastureland, with thick green hedges and heavily feathered elms. Once or twice they had broken the monotony by a stretch along the towing-path of a canal, which, choked with water-lily plants and shining weeds, brooded sluggishly beside the fields. Nature, in one of her ironic moods, had cast a grey and iron-hard cloak over all the country's bland luxuriance.
"Trinity caught us," he replied, and as the punt came over at that moment he gave a huge shove and managed to get into it. I looked across the river and saw a very silent crowd on our barge, so I decided it was no place for me and walked solidly to the end of the towing-path and went home over Folly Bridge. It was a long way round, and I cannot imagine any one going back to St.
It cost us a week, but for my part I didn't grudge it. Your cliffs and deep-water harbours don't appeal to me. Give me a canal with windmills and summer-houses where you can look in on the families drinking tea as you sail by; give me, above all, a canal on Sundays, when the folks walk along the towing-path in their best clothes, and you feel as if you were going to church with them."
I pounded along as far as the Long Bridges, which was really quite a long way, and when I stopped I was sure that we should catch Christ Church. I stood away from the path and tried to persuade myself that I was not feeling very unwell, but I waited until the crowds with the other boats had passed by, and then I walked as fast as I could up the towing-path.
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