he knocked it into a shape which was strange, and terrible, and ugly. It frightened him, and he threw away the piece of wood. Then the three of us sat round that tin on the grass, and we looked at it.
There was one big line across the top of the tin that looked like a mouth. It seemed to be laughing at us, and this made us very angry. So Harris ran at it, and picked it up. He threw it, as hard as he could, into the middle of the river. As it went down into the water, we shouted awful things at it. Then we got into the boat, and we left that place, and did not stop until we reached Maidenhead.
We went through Maidenhead quickly, but, after that, we travelled along more slowly. We stopped for tea just before we got to Cookham. By the time we got through the lock it was evening.
It was a bit windy, and someone had made a mistake because the wind was behind us. That does not usually happen. But that afternoon the wind actually helped us on our way, and the boat moved quite fast.
There were no other people on the river, except for three old men. They were sitting in a boat, and they were fishing. As we got nearer, we could see that they were old. They were also quite serious, because they were watching their fishing lines very carefully. The sun was going down, and it threw a red light across the water. It was very beautiful,and we felt that we were sailing into some strange land.
We did not sail into some strange land. We went straight into that boat with the three old men in it. At first, we did not know what had happened. But then, from the words which rose on the evening air, we understood that we were near people. We also understood that those people were not happy. We had knocked those three old men from their seats, and they were all lying on the bottom of their boat. They were trying to stand up and they were picking fish off themselves. As they worked, they shouted unkind things about us not just the usual things, but special things about us, and about our families.
Harris called out, You ought to be pleased that something so exciting has happened to you!" He added that he was very unhappy to hear men of their age use those bad words.
But the three old men did not seem to agree with Harris.
At Marlow we left the boat near the bridge, and we went to spend the night in a hotel.