CLEAR WATERS 



paddle, the handle of which is pressed into his armpit 

 while the blade is worked with one hand mainly under 

 water. The figure eight is the normal stroke, but 

 there are situations in a coracle's heady course down 

 a river like this when the Lord knows what hiero- 

 glyphics the supple blade is compelled to describe on 

 the churning waters. 



Evan Evans was a man of method ever since he 

 had become a teetotaller, and that was some four or 

 five years before my visits to the river began. He 

 always commenced operations with two dock glasses 

 of port at The Grouse. When you asked him in 

 the ordinary course of procedure in those bad old 

 days what he would have, he always replied that he 

 had long since sworn off liquor, but that he wouldn't 

 mind a glass of port, which, it is needless to say, the 

 prescient landlady had as nearly poured out as decency 

 would allow. Then with the absurd freedom of those 

 days, tempered, however, by a just discrimination of 

 the effect of such an innocuous dose on a gentleman 

 with a past — of which a word presently — and the 

 prospective security of a long voyage with nothing 

 on board but your pocket flask, you asked him to have 

 another. This also he swallowed like a dose of medi- 

 cine and then declared himself ready — nay, in a hurry 

 to embark. I never ventured to call for a bottle of 

 port in the most social hour at The Grouse, for the 

 whisky was excellent, but I had confidence in its 

 futility for evil in my pilot's case. You couldn't look 

 at him and doubt this. Besides he had experienced 

 one terrible warning, which indeed had forced him to 

 take the pledge. For the reader may not be aware 

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