Three Men in a Boat
In 1889, when this humorous book was first clings around your head. The rain is pouring
published, it was an instant success. It tells the
story of three young men who organise a trip in a
small boat along the River Thames—with a dog.
When George and Jim suggest that camping on
the side of the river would be fun, Bill Harris tells
them the following story about what might happen
if they try to camp in the rain.
Imagine it is evening. You are wet through,
and there’s at least two inches of water in the
boat, and everything is damp.
You finally find a place on the bank that’s
not as muddy as other places you have seen,
and you land. You lug out the tent and two of
you start to put it up.
The canvas tent is soaked and heavy, and
it flops about and tumbles down on you, and
1
Adapted from a novel by Jerome K. Jerome
SRF_5_ThreeMeninaBoat.indd 33
steadily down all the time.
It is difficult enough to fix a tent in
dry weather: but in wet, the task becomes
Herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems
that the other person is simply playing the
fool. As soon as you get your side beautifully
fixed, he gives it a tug from his end, and spoils
it all.
‘Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong!’
you shout.
‘No, I haven’t!’ he yells back. ‘Let go
your side!’
‘I tell you, YOU’VE got it all wrong!’ you
roar, wishing that you could shake him, and
you give your ropes a vicious tug that pulls all
his pegs out.
You hear him mutter to himself, and then
comes a savage pull, and away goes your side.
You start to go around and tell him what
you think about the whole business, but, at
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 the same time, he comes around in the same
direction to explain his views to you! So,
you follow each other around and around,
shouting, until the tent tumbles into a heap.
You look at each other across its ruins, and
both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath,
‘What did I tell you?’
Meanwhile, the third man, who has been
bailing out the boat and grumbling to himself
for the last ten minutes, wants to know what
the blazes you’re playing at and why the
blasted tent isn’t up yet.
At last, somehow or other, it does get up.
You realise it’s hopeless trying to light a wood
fire, so you light the methylated spirit stove,
and you all huddle around that.
Rainwater is the main ingredient of supper
that night. The bread is two-thirds rainwater,
the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly rich in it,
and the jam, butter, salt and coffee have all
combined with it to make a strange soup.
After supper, with nothing better to do,
you go to bed. You dream that an elephant
has suddenly sat down on your chest, and a
volcano has exploded and thrown you down to
the bottom of the sea.
You wake up and slowly realise that
something terrible has indeed happened. Your
first impression is that the end of the world
has come. Then you think, perhaps it’s thieves
and murderers, or fire. You start shouting
out to warn others and bring help, but no
help comes. All you know is that thousands
of people are kicking you, and you are being
smothered.
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Somebody else seems in trouble, too.
You can hear faint cries coming from under
your bed. You struggle frantically, hitting out
right and left with arms and legs, and yelling
lustily all the while. At last something gives
way, and you find your head in the fresh air.
You then dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian,
waiting to rob you, and you are preparing for
a life-and-death struggle with him, when it
dawns upon you that it’s Jim.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ he says, recognising you
at the same moment.
‘Yes,’ you answer, rubbing your eyes.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Tent’s blown down, I think,’ he says.
‘Where’s Bill?’
You both raise up your voices and shout for
‘Bill!’ and the ground beneath you heaves and
rocks, and the muffled voice that you heard
before, replies from out the ruin: ‘Get off me,
can’t you?’ And Bill struggles out, a muddy,
trampled wreck, and in an unnecessarily
aggressive mood—he thinks the whole thing
was done on purpose.
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In the morning, you are all speechless,
having caught severe colds in the night. You
also feel very quarrelsome, and snipe in hoarse
whispers during breakfast.
After thinking this through, we decided to
sleep out on fine nights, and stay in a hotel like
respectable folks when it was wet.
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