50 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



moderate sum, and that he was willing to go if I 

 would join him. I accepted his proposal, he having 

 assured me that the boat would be adequately manned, 

 and that the journey would be both easy and interest- 

 ing. His power of German conversation was even 

 less than mine, and either he had not understood 

 aright or he had been cheated, for when we had 

 entered the boat in the dark by help of the faint and 

 flickering light of a lantern, and had been pushed off 

 into the current of the swiftly flowing Danube, I 

 perceived that the boatmen consisted only of one old 

 man and a boy. It was impossible to return, so we 

 made the best of it. One of us two, and it was more 

 frequently myself, for my companion wanted both 

 youth and muscle, had to work an oar almost con- 

 tinuously in order to give steerage-way to the boat. 



We toiled through the night and the following 

 morning, hardly resting at all till we reached Molk, 

 where provisions and fruit were bought and another 

 boatman engaged, and we went onwards after brief 

 delay. We arrived as near to Vienna as the police 

 regulations allowed, very late at night ; but by 

 unexpected good fortune the officials allowed us to 

 land and to sleep hard by, so I was in good time for 

 the steamer, and after a short stay was off in her. I 

 had some agreeable fellow-passengers, and it was a 

 momentous voyage to me. 



The first stoppage was at Pesth, where I was quite 

 unprepared for the grandeur of its quays and buildings. 

 Thenceforward we entered comparative barbarism. 

 There was a considerable delay at the famous rapids 

 of the " Iron Gates," long since removed by blasting 

 the rocks that gave them their name, and where the 



