"ETON TO THE RESCUE!" 63 



a five-pound note and paying Mr. Sawbones his bill for lotion 

 and physic, attendance, plasters, and coloured ditchwater to be 

 bolted by the bumble bee by way of coolers every three hours. 



The vicinity of Eton was also the scene of an active shindy. 

 The stag crossed the Thames somewhere near the cavalry 

 barracks ; and the instant he left the river between Eton and 

 Surley Hall he was set on, ere he was well landed, by a whole 

 host of bargemen and Eton louts, accompanied by several dogs. 

 One dog, as he came out of the water, caught him by the nose, 

 and on my arriving at the opposite bank of the river, whence I 

 watched the whole proceeding, bargemen, bulldogs, and at last 

 the hounds were worrying the deer. There was therefore no 

 more running and, quitting my horse, a boat being at the bank, 

 I jumped into it and pulled across. The first thing the assembly 

 found was the " tawny coat " among them very soon attached 

 to the hinder-leg of the bulldog who had the deer by the head, 

 on whose back the iron hammer of the whip soon made a per- 

 suasive impression. Ere more than the second blow had fallen 

 a sort of sledge-hammer seemed to smite me in the back, giving 

 me a delirious impression of what some nurses do when a child 

 falls down, and lies with nothing turned up but a silent and 

 purple face set for tears : they pick a child up as if the arm 

 was a handle to the body, and then, to bring out the voice, 

 punch it from behind. My assailant, however, on the present 

 occasion hit everything out of me except the voice, so, rising 

 up from among the fighting dogs and stag, on whom the barge- 

 man's blow had sent me, I turned and knocked down a man 

 whom I found immediately in my rear. For an instant then 

 there was a wild scuffle, in which all the bargemen seemed to 

 hug me as well as each other, and all I could do was to " fib " at 

 various ribs. We were too close for the moment to hurt each 

 other much, but it might have been a serious affair for me but 

 for old Eton. Hurrah ! then, for the Etonians. I had a 

 glimpse of their coming up one by one, little and big; so I 

 " sung out," as sailors say, " Eton to the rescue ! " and I declare 

 this, that from the least boy able to kick a man's shin, up to 



